


Shattered

by roseveare



Series: Unbreakable [3]
Category: Haven - Fandom
Genre: Aftermath, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood Addiction, Consent Issues, Established Relationship, F/M, Haven, M/M, Mindfuck, Season/Series 04, The Crocker Legacy, dubious-to-non-consent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-04
Updated: 2016-04-08
Packaged: 2018-05-31 07:03:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 73,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6460489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseveare/pseuds/roseveare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nathan has been clawing his way back to life since he returned to Haven. Dying might just give him the push he needs to get there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Death of Nathan Wuornos

**Author's Note:**

> _Unbreakable_ #3. Canon compliant only up to season 4's _Fallout_ , incorporating an alternate take on the season 4 plot arc but nipping season 5 elements in the bud. Novel-length, in four parts.
> 
> Thanks to Miah Arthur and Sylvia for beta reading!

**1\. The Death of Nathan Wuornos**

Nathan wakes up to agony and confusion. Part of him knows _agony_ shouldn't be possible and fixes on the impossibility, the question of _how_? But the question reverberates through the empty hollows of his brain, while the pain spiralling out from his chest through every limb spikes up into his head and takes away any capacity to think.

Someone is crying. Great hawking sobs of raw emotion, loud and awful -- he registers it, before pain overwhelms the sound and its thin thread of connection to the outside world. Pain is all there is, and there shouldn't be _any_ , but Nathan can't _remember_...

It comes and goes in waves. The surge is too big for him to contain. He doesn't think it's unconsciousness that claims him, just that the whole world becomes the pain until he can sense nothing else. In the ebb, he can make the connection back to exterior things. Eventually, he holds onto that long enough to blink open his eyes and try to turn his head.

Further pain flares in his neck. _Bad._ He stops the movement with a huff of sound. That small sound is enough to make him realise that, in addition to the other person's sobbing, most of the time up until now he's been whimpering himself, a thready, tortured noise.

 _Stop_. Nathan breathes in, the air shuddering reluctantly into his lungs. He needs to find some control, get a hold of himself _._

__

How? He chases the question again.

He remembers chest compressions, pressure hitting repeatedly where the agony is centred now.

He remembers not being able to breathe. 

Memory slams him back down before the next wave and when he recovers, this time, he brings back another question -- _where?_ He's looking up, now, with hazy vision, his open eyes seeing partial darkness and a rock ceiling. Beyond his own sounds of pain, beyond the muffled distress of someone else, pushing through the ebb and surge of the pain tide, he can hear real waves rushing in against rocks. He's not sure it was there at first, so either he didn't notice before, or it's coming closer.

A sense of immanent danger joins the rest.

It's blindingly obvious that he needs to be in a hospital. He isn't used to the signals, but he knows the ones he's receiving now indicate his physical situation is dire. 

He can't turn his head any further, but he clears his throat and his voice rasps and rattles as he gets out something resembling a deliberate sound: " _H...huh..."_

Apparently that's the best he can manage. His heart struggles in his chest like it's going to burst. Pain spirals out from it again.

When he comes back to himself, Duke is desperately shouting his name, gripping the sides of Nathan's face. Nathan's neck screams at him, but the touch brings focus. Pain isn't the only thing that he feels. His hands, which have been an unseen mystery to him in all of the world that he remembers, rise up to curl in Duke's shirt. He feels warm ribs. The pulse under Duke's arm is volcanic, frantic.

"Duke..." It comes out no stronger than a sigh.

"Don't you go," Duke begs. Nathan doesn't understand. Where would he go? He can't move. He's stuck right here. Duke catches his fingers through a cloth barrier of Duke's own open shirt -- even Nathan can register the oddness of that -- wiping them with the shirt before he brings them to his lips. "Hold on, buddy. Hang in there. I'm gonna fix this. I'll make this right."

Nathan tries to pull Duke closer to him, but the body under his hands is trembling and stubborn. Muscles lock and Duke won't come. Doesn't he understand that Nathan can _feel?_ They can touch. They can-- 

His fingers have left red smears on Duke's shirt. 

When he comes back this time, Nathan realises there's something missing. It's taking time to unpick other sensations out from the pain, but the feeling against his skin is chill. He tries to fight the haze over his memory of how this current moment came to be. There was a Trouble. Always a Trouble. The stranger, William, who Lexie brought back... and too many Troubles. 

Duke is shuffling around at Nathan's feet, causing sensation against the side of his foot. An expulsion of sound escapes Nathan -- the brush of touch was lighter than everything else assailing him at the moment, but it's been so long that for a moment, that almost felt like pain, too.

"Tuh... tickles..." Nathan says, thickly. He swallows. His mouth tastes funny. Coppery. Crusty -- wait, that's not taste but another sensation. He runs his tongue over the crusts in his mouth, breaking them up, tries to cough them out past his lips. Ends up coughing until he's forced to swallow them down. There's no pain associated with them. Wherever the blood came from, it wasn't his mouth.

"...Nathan?" Duke's voice wavers, sounding more uncertain than he's ever sounded before. He brushes whatever it was against the sole of Nathan's foot again, and the same _whuff_ of air and grunt spills out of Nathan, even though he tries to hold still. The tickling doesn't hurt, but reacting to it does, and he wants Duke to _stop that_. "Jesus Christ!" Nathan isn't sure why Duke expels the curse in quite that way, and he's growing tired of being confused.

So very tired. Everything is heavy. He lets his head fall back and shuts his eyes.

Duke swears and Nathan feels the cloth Duke's holding frantically scrub over the rest of his body, resulting in reflexive jerks and sparks of pain in plenty of places, but no more tickles. "Shit, I'm sorry," Duke's voice rattles. "Sorry, Nathan, but I have to get you out of here, I _have_ to, and I can't touch you like this."

...Huh?

Nathan can't make sense of that. There's a logic gap here, something he should tell Duke but can't track down himself. He feels a wet slap against his feet and realises the sound of the water has come even closer. The water is cold, and suddenly it makes him fully aware of how dreadfully cold he is all over, like the warmth has been completely leached from his body. He starts shivering, and that hurts, too.

The ground crunches as Duke stands up. He leans down and tries to gather up Nathan in his arms, and _good luck to him and his back_ , thinks Nathan, inanely, because they're near as damn to the same height and weight. Duke struggles and can't lift him. Mutters to himself. "No, no, _no._ Got to do it. Can't do _that_. Shit. Need to do this. I'm doing this. Come on, Nate." In a supreme effort, he hefts Nathan's weight up across his arms.

The world rolls out of focus again. 

It rolls back in with Duke's staggering steps -- each step is also an audible _slosh_ \-- as he carries Nathan out of the... the _cave..._ and into the light. For some reason, it seems wrong that it's daylight outside. His subconscious expected night. 

His body remembers things Nathan doesn't.

At first it's blinding, and he has to shut his eyes. The world turns red through his eyelids, and throbs with the agony Duke's every step jolts through him. Duke is breathing heavily, suffering, struggling.

_Why doesn't he just use--?_

A flood of images assail Nathan and finally, _finally,_ he remembers what happened. The last thought he took into darkness was that he failed -- failed Duke, failed the Troubled, failed Haven... again. Now, he knows he succeeded, but it was _almost_ too late. Duke can't afford to use his curse, so Nathan curls an arm over his shoulder, tries to help with his own weight. Tries to think himself lighter. 

He could tell Duke to put him down and forget him, but that clearly isn't going to happen, or help. 

Duke's arm shifts, tipping Nathan's head so that his forehead comes to rest against the stubble of Duke's chin. It feels prickly and amazing, almost enough to drown out the searing blossom of agony caused by the shift in position of his neck.

When he blinks his eyes open, now, Nathan can see that his chest is covered with scratches. Also that he's not wearing very much. It's generous to suggest he's wearing anything. 

Some of the scratches are old ones reopened -- Wade did a number on him, and it's been less than a month -- but the rest are new. Duke has dabbed them clean, but the movement and the more upright position is starting to make them bleed again.

Duke is shirtless. Back in the cave, it was his shirt he used to wipe Nathan down.

There are scraps of clothing left on Nathan and he uses the biggest, a loop of shirt hanging off one arm, to clutch in across his chest, trying to keep his blood away from Duke, remembering -- remembering _vividly_ now what happens if his blood touches Duke.

It works until Duke slips and falls to one knee. He tries to brace Nathan, to not let him fall and be hurt again -- and ends up sprawled on top of Nathan, bare chest pressed to bare chest.

Duke makes a raw noise and starts to roll clear. Nathan's breath has been taken too harshly away to make any noise of his own. Fires are breaking out all over his rib cage. 

Nothing happens. Duke uncovers his eyes and they aren't silver. He stares, and then his face goes flat, and frozen, and empties of everything.

Nathan thinks, _Of course._ He knew he was missing a connection somewhere. Duke's curse is something that at least between the two of _them_ they don't need to worry about any more.

Duke chokes, "Sorry. So sorry--"

Everything is different now.

Duke picks Nathan up again, and somewhere in the slog of plodding, weary step after plodding, weary step, filled by the background of Duke's laboured breathing and his own agony, Nathan loses consciousness entirely.

***

When he wakes up, it's in a hospital bed, and Jordan and Dwight are by his side. Jordan's face is not the one he'd choose to wake up to after an ordeal, but although her bright red lips are a thin line, her expression is full of too many other concerns to see her hate.

It's kind of disturbing when he realises she's holding one of his hands in both of hers, but he curls his fingers and grips back like her cold hand is a lifeline. She feels not exactly _dead_ , but neutral. Cooler than she should be, but not cold. He's touched corpses before. _Before_ his Trouble came back. He remembers the feel. She doesn't feel like a corpse. She--

His thoughts ping back to the nasty present. " _Duke?"_ He heaves the word out from his aching chest, and it resists him all the way. The pain is still there, but it's distant, locked away by a barrier of fluff.

Painkillers. A lot of painkillers.

"Duke's just a few rooms away," Dwight says. Dwight looks very grim. "He's under sedation. His heart rate was -- he was having a panic attack. It was better to put him out."

Nathan doesn't trust that they're so quick to tell him that. They don't trust Duke anymore, so they put him outuntil Nathan was conscious again to deal with him. After this, he can't blame them if... 

No. He can blame them. Duke wouldn't have done any of it on purpose. It was something that he was driven to, by William, and Nathan might have been almost too late, but he did bring Duke back.

He glares at Dwight.

"We had no choice," Dwight says, firmer.

"He was going crazy over you," Jordan adds.

...Maybe it _is_ better that Duke remains out of the equation until Nathan is back in it. Nathan slumps back in his hospital bed -- hadn't realised he was craning forward. There are white dressings on his chest. Now that the drugs dull the all-encompassing agony there, he can feel the other hurts, hazily. His ass hurts. His limbs hurt, especially at the joints. The ache in his neck is focused in a particular shape, like someone curled their hand around it and squeezed. 

"Duke killed me." Nathan supposes one of them is going to say it, if he doesn't. Someone has to say it. The evidence is inarguable. If a Crocker hadn't killed him, he'd still have his Trouble.

"Then he brought you back." Jordan nods. "It's the only way we could make sense of it." Her hands clutch tighter around his. It's very weird.

There are other things Nathan remembers. He turns his face away from their gaze, even though it hurts his neck. His eyes feel hot. He sighs and his voice trembles on the long breath. "What's the... the damage?" He settles for that word.

"I should get the nurse." Dwight half stands.

"You read the reports." He's the goddamn Chief of Police. "You _know._ "

"Three broken ribs," Dwight says. "Hyoid fracture. Some deep abrasions on your chest, and..." His expression flickers from a trace of judgement back to discomfort. "A small amount of anal tearing. I'm sorry, Nathan, we weren't expecting--"

He means he'd have kept Jordan out of it if he'd been expecting that bomb. She clutches Nathan's hand harder. He realises that touch says, _It's okay, I know what it's like._

Nathan shuts his eyes. Honestly, there's no guarantee that part happened last night. Things have been screwed up since William started piling on the hyped-up Troubles. Duke freaked out about going silver-eyed during sex for a second time, and they started using condoms after that. They are often rough, and when Nathan can't feel...

Still, it probably happened last night. Nathan remembers Duke pinning him down and thrusting into him, eyes altered and alien. Telling him he loved him so much, that it wasn't fair. 

What wasn't fair?

Nathan can't remember how the situation metamorphosed from trying to talk Duke down into sex. It might have been himself that initiated it, but even if it wasn't, the pattern of their lovemaking has been so screwed up lately that Jordan's assumptions are almost certainly askew.

"No." It didn't hurt. Nothing _hurt_ until after. Words are a struggle. "Duke's been... strange, lately. Over my blood. Ever since..." Over a week ago, William started sending Troubles into overdrive: he wants Lexie to come to him, to learn how to give people Troubles. He thinks that she's someone he used to love, a woman he calls Mara.

Nathan thinks that she's Audrey. Somehow, and he doesn't know how, because it almost killed Audrey to try and remember Lucy, but _somehow_ he thinks she remembers being Audrey more than she ought. She's too good at police work. He's also started to think the way she glares at him isn't just a personality clash.

It makes him unhappy and hollow to think of Lexie being Audrey and _knowing_ , all this time she pretended she didn't remember. While he's been with Duke, in front of her.

"I don't know what happened," Nathan admits. He remembers how it all came back to him when he was being carried across the shore in Duke's arms, but it's lost under a drugged haze now. He shifts in the bed. Tubes pull at him. He turns his neck slowly to look at Dwight and Jordan properly again. Stiffness and pain impede the movement. Hyoid bone... anyone who's worked a few strangulation cases knows what that is. Duke placed his hand on Nathan's throat and...

"My throat. Will it heal?" he croaks. He's never heard of anyone breaking that bone who wasn't already dead.

Dwight grimaces. "Yeah. I thought the same. Weird, huh? Apparently there're like a handful of documented cases. It should heal pretty quick. Doctors were freaking out about airway compression if the tissues swell, but your breathing seems okay. They said they probably won't need to do anything surgical."

Nathan blinks. Jordan makes the effort to smile soothingly at him, and it's frightening. "Lexie?" he asks.

"No-one knows where she went," Dwight says bleakly. "I think she went after William, after you and Duke went off the grid."

"Kind of hoping that she went _after_ William and not _to_ William," Jordan murmurs.

 _Hell,_ thinks Nathan.

They know they're just putting this off. They have Troubles going haywire and now they no longer have Duke. They need Nathan to deal with Duke, but even if they get both of them functional... No. Nathan stops, stubbornness digging in. _They no longer have Duke._ They can't afford to use the Crocker Curse to fix anything again.

Lexie's gone. They don't have Duke. They _need_ Nathan.

The room is spinning slowly. Nathan flexes his hand idly, and it feels heavy as he pulls it against the tube stuck in the back of it. Things catch and shift, and little hurts flare up. If he was still Troubled, he might pull it out anyway. But he stops. He looks to Dwight. "I need to get up."

Dwight nods tightly, but looks as though he doesn't like it. Nathan doesn't like it either. Sickness roils inside him. He's not used to that. He feels... He feels mostly like he's going to embarrass himself.

"Gloria!" Dwight calls, leaning quickly out of the door. 

A moment later, Haven PD's new old ME shuffles in, looking shifty. She eyes Nathan with judgement and Dwight with even more and says, "He's not fit to move, and I ain't down with using a human life like this, but there're too many Troubles out there and too few who can deal with them, and I'll have you know that's the only reason I'm doing this. That, and I'll be sticking to the three of you like glue until he's back in professional care."

She briskly pulls the tubes from Nathan's hand. He hisses.

"Now, git out, 'cause I got other tubes to yank, and he's gonna need to get up and pee, probably, and these hospital gowns are scary enough to just be seen in by poor old Gloria." She scrunches up her bulldog face and glowers at Dwight and Jordan. They flee about as fast as anyone would, and Nathan quails inside.

***

Gloria's ministrations take about an hour to get Nathan back to some semblance of humanity, checking over his pulses and responses, checking he's not too loopy on the pain meds since he hasn't taken any form of analgesia in years. But eventually she gets him into the clothes Dwight brought for him and into a wheelchair, and gets him out of the room, into a corridor where a window at the end shows a late afternoon sky. It's almost a whole day since Nathan decided to go after Duke. They lost Duke anyway. They almost lost _him_. They might yet have lost Lexie.

 _Duke's still alive,_ Nathan reminds himself.

Yeah, he's still alive. Nathan's heart thumps. Duke is still alive, and for Nathan that's -- that's everything. But right now, he has to think of the wider picture, and in the wider picture, Duke will never be any use to them again. 

Dwight and Jordan aren't outside the room. Gloria wheels the chair down the corridor, and Nathan doesn't think of the wider picture, he thinks of Duke.

He slams his foot down onto the floor and stops the chair suddenly. That hurts a _lot_. When he's finished gulping breaths and Gloria's finished swearing at him, he gasps, "I want to see Duke."

Gloria swears at him again. Then she turns back stiffly to the door they just passed, and shoves it open. "Can you see him?" she snaps.

Nathan, confined to a chair, with a much lower perspective of the world than he's used to, can see a bed with a lump in it. " _No,_ " he responds, surly. He starts trying to brace his arms and get both feet on the ground and enough aligned with his centre of gravity to push off and get up. They don't make hospital wheelchairs to _get up_ from.

"I will _tie_ you to that thing," Gloria threatens. She catches him and pulls him back. Her hands, he's already discovered, are gentler than her brusque actions ever look. She gets behind the chair and pushes him to the head of Duke's bed.

Duke doesn't just have tubes, but is attached to machines that beep and monitor his heartbeat. That's instantly alarming. "He's -- he was _all right_ ," Nathan protests. His voice is breathy. He's noticing the problem in speaking more now he's upright and alert. Maybe it's down to the broken hyoid bone that he can't get the volume, that his sounds seem to slur. He seems to remember reading, somewhere, that it's attached to the vocal chords. "He carried me back."

"He was freaking out," Gloria snaps. "Best thing we could do was have him sleep it off."

Nathan reaches out and touches Duke. Dark hair is soft under his fingers, stubble hard, skin slightly clammy, and it takes him a few moments to _remember_ those things, and catalogue them anew. He strokes Duke's face, wonderingly.

 _Why? Why did he do it?_ Nathan had thought he'd got him back. He remembers a moment where Duke's eyes were clear. Then he'd reached for Nathan's throat.

Duke's breath moves slowly, and when Nathan lowers his hand to hover it above Duke's lips, it feels miraculous. Soft, warm, damp puffs of air caress his skin.

Yet Duke deliberately reached out and stopped _his_ breathing.

"Hey, now," Gloria says, "I know you two are all lovey-dovey, but we only got time for one beautiful moment." She slaps his hand, a sharp sting, batting it away from Duke. 

Nathan's head jerks up, and her face softens while he's sagging into the back of the chair, trying to work through the nasty result of that movement. She places her hand on his shoulder through his shirt and rubs soothingly, little soft circles with her gnarled fingers. Nathan's body loosens, some of the knots of pain easing as he sinks into the touch. Soft touch like he hasn't had for such a long time. She sees it and keeps going, making a soothing hum in the back of her throat.

"It's alright, kid," she says, prosaically, finally stopping and picking up the handles of the chair again, manoeuvring them around. "I got a fuckton of the _really_ good drugs in my kit if we need 'em. You just give the word."

Nathan tries to turn his head for a last look at Duke, but is too restricted to get more than a glimpse. Then the door swings closed behind them, and he _really_ needs to start thinking of other things. Without Audrey, without Duke, without Lexie, and with William still at large, all they have is _him_ , so he can't afford to be... broken.

But if he closes his eyes it's like it's still going on, behind the lids. Memory without sensation was always too persistently real, too close to the _now._ He feels it in his muscle aches and deep in his body like it's sensation delayed... The memory kicks into replay... how hard Duke pinned him down, and then fucked him the way Nathan had secretly always wanted, relentless and silver eyed. Except everything was wrong. The blood, sliding down his chest. Duke's face buried in the wounds. The rage, the intensity, wasn't Duke anymore, but something else he'd _become._

And Nathan couldn't stop it. Couldn't do anything. Trying had resulted in an hours-long ordeal and _this_. Sensation coursing through him. His body broken and repaired and broken over.

"You still with us?" Gloria asks. "C'mon, it's gonna give me some explaining to do if we take you out of here and you make me bring you right back in."

Nathan blinks open his eyes onto hospital corridors. Breathes. Breathing hurts. More than anything else, it seems unfair that the most basic act of sustaining his life should involve so much effort. At the moment, he can feel his heart, too, and that's such a strange, heavy feeling, that he wonders how he'll ever get used to it again. 

Chest compressions, like the act of sex, the same rhythm over and over... Fuelled by Duke's silver-eyed power... It was a wonder he did bring him back, didn't kill him twice over. Maybe Nathan's heart _is_ actually bruised. It would make sense, the way the pain swells with each beat.

"...Here," he acknowledges Gloria, belatedly. 

"He'll be all right." She's sharp with him, which makes him think the delay was longer than it seemed. "You've done everything anyone could. He'll sleep now for hours. Needs the rest to recover. Same thing you need, and won't get. Leave him be 'til after the immediate crisis. He's the lucky blighter."

Nathan roughly manages to ask, "What _is_ the immediate crisis?" but she just grunts at him and trundles the chair along. If they're not going to let him stand up, he does wonder how much use he can possibly be. At this stage, it seems they must want him for his brain more than his body, so perhaps that won't matter. But the value of either seems pretty negligible at the moment.

They find Jordan and Dwight next to a coffee machine, heads close, talking softly. It's been like that since Jordan shed her Trouble... A shiver runs down Nathan's spine in the recall. They've both been resurrected now, after a death at the hands of the Crocker Curse, free of their Troubles maybe, but not unscathed.

Nathan sees the shift in Dwight's face, looking up as they approach. Suddenly he looks much more comfortable than he did when Nathan was in the hospital bed, and Nathan thinks maybe they're just too used to seeing him as something implacable, so it's like it's a source of embarrassment for Dwight to witness him _hurting._

Jordan looks easier, too. It's relief, probably, that he looks presentable enough she won't need to put herself out there to comfort him again. Gloria did an efficient job of scraping him back together. At least, he looked almost normal, when she faced him with himself in the mirror. Pale, though, from all of the blood that Duke absorbed.

It occurs to Nathan to wonder why they're _there,_ with a certain amount of affront, because even if they felt they had to come to his bedside, there is supposed to be a crisis going on and they could have gone ahead and left Gloria to bring him to the scene. Then he realises this is probably the closest _to_ downtime they've had in about twenty-four hours. Their faces show the tiredness and the strain. Dwight's eyes are dark smudged. Jordan's are -- well, her make-up needs refreshing and it's harder to say. But there's still strain there.

Dwight gives him a nod and a, "Nathan." Jordan gives him a narrow-eyed look, like she's figuring out how best to take a step back from her earlier show of compassion. Nathan opens his mouth and Dwight's phone rings. Even as he reaches for it, there's a low rumble, and the ground shifts beneath them. Nathan _feels_ it shift, up through the wheels of the chair into his distantly aching ass. For a moment, the world moves, and then stills.

Dwight barks into his phone, " _What?"_ There's a rim of white visible around his eyes, and Dwight, like all of them, is very much nearing the end of his tether. Even Gloria's family was among the first to fall victim to William's insane spate of killer Troubles and the unavoidable solution of the Crocker Curse.

Dwight listens. Nathan tries to, but the voice on the other end is panicked and he can't make out the tinny words. Everyone holds their breath -- for Jordan it's an easy option -- and the ground shivers once more.

"All right, we'll be there in five," Dwight says, and lowers the phone. "Okay..." He looks around them. "The harpies and the killer trees will have to wait until later. We have something new."

***

A new fault line has opened up through the centre of Haven. Nathan knows what it is -- earthquakes, volcanism, the San Andreas Fault; he studied it in school, though he's never been anywhere that had them. Except, temporarily, Haven the other week, and the small ash volcano that blew out a house and showered debris for a hundred yards around.

This is _not_ small. It's a major structural upheaval that's taken out most of a road, leaving one side sliding downwards toward the crack at a shallow angle, with the buildings on that side of the street starting to lean. The heat is immense. Nathan can feel it coming up out of the chasm even from Dwight's truck, as Dwight curses and starts to reverse. They can see HPD officers, but they're some distance down the street and there's no safe way to drive to them.

"I can walk," Nathan says. A bold assertion. He managed not to fall while transferring from the wheelchair to the car seat, but the speed with which Gloria nabbed the hospital wheelchair, folding it up and stashing it in the trunk, wasn't a declaration of confidence.

"I'll take us around. I can still get closer than this." Dwight grits his teeth and guides the vehicle over terrain that Nathan realises is moving even as they try to ride over it. He leans back as the truck turns, risking his stiff and aching neck to watch a crack spread off the main chasm and take out a house that's stood on that spot for as long as Nathan's been alive.

"I _hope_ they evacuated," Gloria says. "Nathan, you get that neck facing front and keep it that way. You got an injury there's squat living cases of each year the world over. Don't fucking push it."

Jordan snorts and Gloria gives her a cool, narrow-eyed look. Best not to dwell on the relationship between those two. Jordan doesn't have much love for coroners these days.

By that time they've pulled around via a less direct route. There's other traffic on this street, mostly HPD cars and emergency services, mostly heading away. Nobody could miss the new chasm forming. An offshoot like that in the wrong place would take out everyone here. Even with the distraction of Jordan and Gloria's expletive competition, an unpleasant surety forms that Nathan knows whose Trouble this is. 

More precisely, he knows whose Trouble this _was._

"Garland Wuornos," he says to Dwight. He leans forward, making strapped-up ribs creak, putting his hand on the big man's shoulder as he's cutting the engine, and says it again. He can't seem to get any volume into his voice. "This is my dad's Trouble, souped up about a hundred times. That means they're a--"

"A relation." Dwight's face flickers with guilty hope. "Who, Nathan? Think! Do any of your family live down here?"

"Not here." The crack in Haven extends out of sight. "Where else does this thing go?" 

Dwight gets out of the truck and starts yelling over to Officer Rafferty, then swears and gives up. "Stay put," he orders brusquely back into the car, before chasing off to talk to the HPD officers on-scene, who already have more than enough call on their attention.

Gloria turns to Nathan with that WTF? face she does so well. "You holding out on me, kid? 'Cause I knew your dad, and he was never Troubled that I knew." She doesn't say, _And how's that a different Trouble from yours?_ but that just adds Gloria to the heap of people who knew about Max Hansen and never told him, which offers nothing unexpected or new.

Given that, her accusation makes Nathan snort. "I guess he hid it well. Like a few other things." He ducks his head. Jordan's face is carefully blank -- she knows about Max, but that's because he told her, back when he was using it as currency to get the Guard to trust him. He stares at the worn pattern on the denim weave in the old jeans Dwight brought him. Can't shut his eyes. Duke lurks there. But he does need to think. "I don't -- dad didn't have many relatives in town. There were a couple of... aunts. Shirley and... uh, Anne-Marie." 

Their last names would have been different, and Nathan can't remember them. They both died when he was younger, but they'd had family. He was pretty sure Anne-Marie's girls had grown up and moved out of town. He hopes William's crazy Trouble activations don't affect the Troubles of family members, wherever they are. "I think we're looking for Shirley's son, Gavin. He'd be my age now." He _still_ can't remember the name. Damn it, he'd sent invites from dad's address book for the memorial. That day was all a blur. Had Gavin been there? He'd been... bald, but apart from that, he'd looked like Garland Wuornos, a bit. Nathan sighs. "Puttman. I think it was Puttman. I can't remember the address, but it's in dad's old stuff back at my house."

It's Gloria's turn to snort. "Garland never was any good at keeping touch. Seems like you're following in his footsteps."

"I've been _busy_ ," Nathan says sourly.

Jordan says softly, "We'll find him, Nathan." The sensitive-and-concerned act would be freaking him out all the more, but she's been subtly softening toward him since she began dating Dwight. She seems distracted. Her head turns and a strange expression develops on her face.

"Is that _lava?"_ Gloria's question is sharp. Nathan can only see the heat distortion on the air above the giant crack in the earth, and Gloria slaps a hand to his shoulder to prevent him from craning to see.

"...Aaand we have volcanoes again," Jordan mutters. "That's just great."

"This isn't like last time." Nathan eyes the heat distortion with frustration. An orange glow reflects in the windows of houses, and off car windows and bodywork closer in. He can't see it with his own eyes, but he'll take it as read that there's _lava_. "Something this size could wipe out a town." He thinks again of people melted into statues in Pompeii.

Dwight comes back, stumbling as the ground moves beneath his feet. He has to grab for the truck door. He wrenches it open with difficulty, still trying to use it to keep his balance at the same time. "Crack extends almost down to the shoreline. It's growing offshoots. Garland had _this_ Trouble?"

"It's amped up about a hundred times," Nathan says again.

"We think it's a Wuornos cousin," Gloria butts in. "Dwight, get in and drive, and tell those A-holes to pack themselves off out of here. Any fool can see this place is gonna blow."

"It's half of Haven," Dwight growls back. He gets in, but his head turns, eyes fixing on Nathan. "It started about a hundred yards up, by the corner of Cotter Street."

Nathan has a book at home that will tell him exactly where to look, but there isn't time. "Go," he says, tensely. Hopefully he'll recognise Gavin Puttman if he sees him.

Dwight puts his foot down and spins them in a tight circle. Gloria has to grab for purchase, interrupting a melodramatic toss of her hands into the air, but she doesn't demand that Dwight drop her off at the end of the street to go in the opposite direction, and Dwight doesn't suggest it. 

Nathan is sweating from the heat, and it's possible some of the pain meds are wearing off. Are his limbs trembling, or is that the ground shaking again, shaking him with it? He tries to make his brain work through the fog. It must be slow, to take him this long to realise that his father's book doesn't have to be the only repository of the information they need, just because it's the one he used before.

"Jordan," he says thickly. He _wishes_ that he could get his throat under control. "Do you have Vince's number in your phone?"

She passes it wordlessly back. He prods unfamiliar buttons. The sensation of them irritates his fingers, makes the actions feel like a slog. He lifts the phone to his ear. Vince is instantly irritable. Jordan did not ingratiate herself with him before she sort of mostly quit the Guard. "Vince, it's me," Nathan says, not that he expects it to improve the reaction. When Vince's teeth snap and he goes quiet, Nathan knows that the Teagues have heard. He forges on. "I need to find a relative who might have... dad's Trouble. Gavin Puttman."

After a second, Vince says hoarsely, "Let me check the _Herald_ mailing list, Nathan. I'll call back." His solemnity is almost annoying, if Nathan had anywhere near enough energy to be _annoyed_. A moment later, the phone held loosely in his hand rings back, and Vince returns him an address.

It's in their epicentre zone. 

Dwight's already headed there, but at least now they know which house to go to.

It's almost beside the point. The road seems to be crumbling underneath them. Dwight skews the truck to try and find the safest part of the road remaining, but the world is shifting around them. It's like a scene from some disaster movie, and it certainly feels like this chasm is opening up with the intent to destroy Haven once and for all. Was this why dad suicided rather than let them try to help him? Despite all her instincts, Nathan had never really believed Audrey's word on that.

He wipes an arm over his forehead and brings it away damp. Breathing feels harder. He realises he's almost forgotten the address Vince told him already, and his mind scrapes desperately after it.

A crack opens up in the road in front of them. It's not one of the big cracks, which are filling with glowing lava, but one of the filigree splits spreading out as the rest of the landscape tries to shift to accommodate. Either way, Dwight can't avoid it.

***

Nathan's neck hurts more fiercely than before as he crawls out of the truck. He lands on his hands and knees on cracked and rubbly ground that feels hot to the touch. Crawling hurts, but he thinks falling would hurt more, so he crawls the short distance to Jordan's door. She was sitting directly in front of him. Debris blocks it, foiling her attempts to shove it open. Nathan reaches up and pushes from the side, using his body weight more than any residue of strength left in him, and it starts to tip. Some of it shifts back, threatening to fall on him. Then, Jordan pushes again from inside the truck with her crazy strength. The debris scatters out away from Nathan and the door wedges open enough for her to squeeze through.

There's a long piece of shrapnel through her chest -- Nathan can see both sides -- but apart from the hassle it causes her in squeezing out she doesn't seem to care. She steps over him on her way around the vehicle, yelling for Dwight. The roof was crushed inward down the middle, between the two of them and the driver's side where Dwight and Gloria are. 

Nathan can hear Gloria swearing, trying to wrench her door, but he can't hear Dwight. The bodywork is more badly crumpled on that side of the truck.

"He's unconscious," Jordan's voice floats over. "But I don't think he's badly hurt."

Gloria swears and crawls out of Nathan's door. She, too, steps over him on the way to get to Dwight. Their voices, talking together, fade into fuzzy background. Nathan looks out across the devastation and sees two figures among the madness and churned-up chaos that was a quiet Maine street. One of them is a man, almost bald, not tall, crouched rocking beside a hole in the ground the approximate size of a house. Nathan guesses it used to be the address he's been trying to keep stored in his head.

The other figure is William, dancing over the cracks. Singing.

Nathan is fairly sure David Bowie never wrote 'The Man Who Broke the World'. "Jordan..." He tries to get enough volume in his voice to reach her.

A fire hydrant is the sole solid object in a sea of quivering debris. Nathan curls an arm around and climbs up it, but even the hydrant is starting to shift by the time he's getting his feet under him. He suspects it won't be long until there's water spurting out to add to the chaos, unless the pipes have already been hit lower down. He lurches the half-dozen steps back to the truck and falls against the hood. " _Jordan_."

She looks up at him. He tries to turn his head to indicate. Bad idea. "William's here. So is Gavin."

Nathan starts inching his way across the uneven ground toward Gavin and hopes Jordan follows. The heat alone makes him want to pass out. The ground shakes him, and trying to navigate this without feeling would have been hard, but feeling it is harder. He takes it one step at a time, trying to put from his mind that he doesn't know when it all might shatter and blow. At least it doesn't seem like William cares about that, while he's dancing in the middle of it.

He sees Nathan shuffling like an old man across the terrain and waves. "Hiya, Nate. Did you enjoy my little gift? Made Duke the man you always wanted him to be?" He stops, eyes narrowing into a searching squint. "Wow. I never thought it would go _that_ far." William looks actually taken aback. The idea that he can see Nathan's no longer Troubled is disturbing. "Still, maybe you'll be more fun this way. But I can always... you know. Give you that Trouble back. Or a whole shiny new one." His face opens up with perverse excitement and he flicks a black sphere into the air. It drifts down just slow enough to make it clear it's not obeying normal gravity, returning to him with a little detour like it's something alive.

"Screw you," is the limit of Nathan's capacity to converse with William right now.

"Tut, tut. Manners, Mr. Wuornos. Anyway, I'll let you think a little on that one. My boys, coming in while you're asleep. One handprint on your back and it's a whole new ballgame."

That was more of a threat before. He'll feel them trying, now, and wake up. He's already been keeping a gun under his pillow.

"I will fuck you up, you sick freak," says Jordan's voice from behind Nathan's left shoulder.

"Ah. Jordan," William says in wary acknowledgement, his demeanour changing. Last time they met, Jordan broke both his nose and Lexie's, despite all the rest of their caution not to hurt William since Nathan tried to shoot him and Lexie almost died.

Nathan has nearly reached Gavin. He takes the last few steps and places his hand on the man's shoulder, trying to soothingly speak his name.

"I _really_ wouldn't do that," William says, almost sounding genuine about it, as the rumbling starts anew. "He seems to have reached a sort of temporary equilibrium."

"Why would you do this?!" Jordan yells at him. "Haven's your home too, isn't it?!"

"Can't make an omelette without..." William takes a big run-up and jumps five feet of molten lava in the central fissure at one of its narrower points. Abruptly, he's a lot too close for comfort. He doesn't bother to finish that sentence, but he adds, "Home is meaningless without the right _people_."

Nathan tries to ignore him and gets down on his knees, even though getting up again is an uncertainty, to try to dig Gavin out from his huddle. "Damn it, it's me. Nathan. Your cousin, remember? I'm here to help you."

"You..." Even Gavin's bleary eyes spark with knowledge and hate. Nathan groans internally. It's always the same now. He will never be free of what he's done.

"Come on, stay with me, Gavin." Nathan tries to keep the other man's head up, pulling at his face. Maybe it's not a good idea, because the ground starts to split beneath his knees. He _can't_ move fast enough to avoid it if a crack opens up under him. This position is agony enough on his rib cage already. "Gavin, _please._ You have to stop this. You're the one in control."

"Don't you think I'm trying!" the Troubled man shouts.

William laughs, and something inside Nathan snaps and starts to boil with rage. All this... it's recalling vividly to him the last minutes of Garland Wuornos, and it seems to him that William must have chosen this victim specifically because of _him_. It would be a pretty big coincidence.

Nathan spins too fast and has to catch himself on all fours. That hurts _everything._

"Not quite so unbreakable anymore," William observes, and a hand slides over the top of Nathan's bowed head. He hadn't realised William had got so close. He's still too busy recovering from the jolt of pain to react. "I always thought that Trouble was less _Troublesome_ than the Hansens really deserved. But you know how it is. You can't always control every little detail." William's voice is even closer. A finger slides down Nathan's earlobe and his cheekbone. He shakes his head furiously and the world greys out for a second.

When he can look up again, William is on the ground, groaning, and Jordan's long legs are between them. The echoes of the words, " _Get the fuck away from him,"_ are ringing in his ears.

"Ow," says William, indistinctly. "Ow, _ow."_

"Ow!" yells another voice, from across the crack in the earth. "Damn it, Jordan!"

Lexie. Nathan's hopes lift, and he manages to get his feet under him again. He staggers into Jordan, who isn't supposed to touch William but just decked him with a bare fist, who offers an elbow and holds him up.

Lexie stomps across the terrain in her fuck-me leather boots, holding a bloody nose with one hand. Her leather miniskirt seems even smaller than usual, piercings and metalwork shining orange-red from the glowing lava pools upwelling from the cracks, "William, it's not working. I found a guy who mends china, but it went wrong. You need to do this."

"Unh." William makes a grunting noise.

Nathan gapes. "Lexie, what are you doing? We need to fix this!"

"I'm _trying_!" Something in her eyes isn't like Lexie, or Audrey, or anyone he's met with her face before. She looks dubiously at the crack in the ground, and doesn't attempt to jump it. "I just can't remember enough. William, I can't make it happen!"

A horrible feeling slides through Nathan. She might not remember enough, but she remembers something. She reads his face and scowls.

"I'm sick of putting human beings down like dogs because we can't fix this! I'm going to learn another way, and screw you, Nathan, but it's _my_ choice, and this is the way I want to do it! You should be grateful. You won't have to risk your precious Duke any more!"

Her emphasis makes him decidedly uneasy. It's so close to being all out in the open now.

"Ah, honey," William says. "I guess it's difficult getting back on the horse."

Lexie gives him a look that isn't entirely hostile. 

"She's right," William adds, backing off. "As I was saying, you can't always predict the results you'll get, and this one is getting just a liiiittle bit out of control. So we probably should go find a way to fix this before it rips apart what's left of Haven. Toodle-pop."

A shot rings out, cold down Nathan's spine. Apparently it's just as much a shock to William, and to Lexie, who spins and gasps.

"Fuck you!" yells Jordan, her eyes shiny with tears. Gavin Puttman lies a few feet from her, no longer curled up and locked in a crisis of trying to control his uncontrollable Trouble. 

For a moment, Nathan's brain loses all ability to spin thought.

"What did you do?!" yells Lexie, freaking out.

Another Troubled person dead.

Dad's death, all over again. Jordan's hand this time, not the victim's own.

"You don't have to work with William!" Jordan hurls back. "It's fixed! _He's_ the one who did this in the first place! Don't let him play you. Walk away." Tears are sliding freely down Jordan's face. All those threats, and it strikes Nathan she never actually killed anyone before.

Lexie stares at her, affronted and angry. She steps back. She points at William. "I want to go with him."

"Lexie..." Nathan breathes. He wishes Duke hadn't broken his voice with everything else. He can't make himself _heard._

William, closer, hears just fine. "Maybe I can give her something you people _can't_. Something she deserves. You know she _came back_ for you. And you..." He waves a hand. "Well. All tight with the floppy-haired crook, these days, aren't we, Nathan? Unless that's changed now, because I have to tell you--" William is laughing, shaking his head as he speaks. "You don't look good, Nate. I'll bet she wouldn't even want the bits that were left after Crocker finished."

"Audrey..." Nathan closes his eyes. He's known.... _part_ of him has known for a while now. He just didn't want to admit it to himself. It wasn't that Lexie never liked him. It was that she was watching him betray her from the second _Audrey_ stepped back through that mystical door.

Yet she helped save his life anyway. Becoming Lexie caused the Guard to cave, to let him live, let Duke live...

She has been alone for weeks while they searched for a new life in each other.

Nathan finds his voice as he reopens his eyes, forces the name out loud and clear enough to reach her: " _AUDREY!"_ It hurts. He reaches out with his hand. He barks out more words in desperation, each one a flare of agony, "Come with _me_."

Gavin Puttman is dead, so it has to be an illusion that the world is still crumbling beneath his feet.

"It doesn't have to be about who you love." Jordan's voice cracks almost as badly as Nathan's. "Who do you want to fucking _be?_ "

"Aw, f'r Chrissakes..." William whines as Lexie -- Audrey -- casts him a darting look and then scoots away from him as something in her eyes clears. Nathan stumbles along the edge of the crack, following in line with her footsteps over on the other side, while Jordan holds the gun on William. From past example, William is not confident enough of her abiding by the don't-shoot-William-and-hurt-Lexie rule that he'll dare to test her. 

Audrey's steps are too quick and her limbs seem shaky, even at several yards with the chasm between them. Nathan's mouth opens, poised on a warning not to make the jump. But she takes a run-up and jumps, successfully, then she's landing in his arms. Her arms clutch around his chest -- pain, so much _pain_. He makes some noise that warns her to be more careful. He catches her again before she can break clear completely and holds her to him, awash with regret. What the hell has he _done?_

"Nathan... Nathan..." Her touch is like anyone else's to him, now.

"We'll figure this out," Nathan rasps. But the ground under his feet is still broken.

***

"What the hell is going on?" Dwight, it seems, has woken up with a headache. Nathan is leaning by the machine that dispenses the station's terrible coffee, clinging to the wall with one hand for stability, the other clutched around a cup he's only hoping he continues to manage not to drop. He feels grey. Dwight appears to remember, mid-step, and both calms the fire in his approach and lowers his tone. "Nathan? I just spoke to Jordan... Was this your idea?"

"Hers." Nathan gulps back coffee. It's his second cup since returning to the station. He went with Lexie. Jordan went with William and Gloria. Stan and the other two officers it took to manoeuvre Dwight into another car went with Dwight. Sometimes, there are no choices.

"Jesus Christ, Nathan. How could you? She's a mess, and if he catches onto it, he can kill her with _one touch_. She killed Puttman to stop William, and alright, I _get_ that right now she's the only reason we have William at all. As far as I can figure it, because he believes she's unstable enough to kill both him and Lexie... Hell, _I_ believe it. If she shoots William and Lexie dies..."

"Audrey," Nathan corrects. The coffee sears his throat. He doesn't remember feeling the first few gulps. He'd forgotten _too hot_.

"...What?" Dwight makes an uncertain double-take. 

"It's Audrey." Audrey is sitting in Nathan's office. Duke is unconscious in the hospital. And everything _already_ hurt.

Dwight clings to the wall at the other side of the coffee machine, like he needs its support, too.

"It's always been Audrey. I think part of... _both_ of us knew, these last few weeks. We just didn't want to accept it."

Wordlessly, Dwight fills a cup and slumps heavier against the wall.

Nathan asks, "How's the head?"

"Lousy. Gloria wants me in the ER. We don't have the _people_. A quarter of the town just fell down a hole. Besides which, I dragged you out of the hospital."

"Concussion's different," Nathan says, carefully.

"If the Crocker Curse took your Trouble, you were _clinically dead_ ," Dwight shoots back stonily. Nathan gives him a look that he hopes implies he still feels like he is. He at some point soon needs to go back into his office and face Audrey, and he has to face Duke, too, sooner or later. He does not know what will result from either encounter. Dwight follows his gaze and a grimace wrinkles the large band-aid on the big guy's forehead.

Dwight reaches across the coffee machine and puts a hand on Nathan's shoulder. He holds it there for several beats before he pulls away. But through that contact, Nathan feels the powerful heat and life that's in Dwight, seeping in through his clothes down to his skin, and it reminds him that he's gained something -- something he doesn't deserve and never expected to have -- even if it does feel like feeling again is the curse, at the moment.

Then, Dwight frowns. "There are still fire-breathing harpies and cattle-eating trees out there, aren't they?"

Nathan has yet to see either, but has been inundated with reports in Dwight's absence since he got back. He manages to twitch his lips slightly at Dwight's surly roll of the head. "Enjoy those. I need to talk to Audrey."

***

She's sitting cross-legged in the miniskirt, fingers tapping on the top of the table, rattling her rings against it. That ironmongery, along with all the rest pierced through her face, glitters in the lamp's white light. Her chin jerks up as he enters. There's work on her desk -- on Lexie's desk -- but she hasn't been doing it. Paperwork isn't anyone's priority right now, in the midst of crisis and considering how late the day is drawing. Her line of sight is a gap in the blinds that leads directly to the coffee machine. She's been watching for his return.

Her eyes are dark and angry.

Lexie -- it occurs to him there must have _been_ a Lexie DeWitt, or a proto-Lexie, like there was a Sarah, and a Lucy, only Lexie... maybe she was pulled out of the Barn half-formed, with enough Audrey left to remember. Because the clothes and the jewellery would've driven Audrey nuts in about half an hour, and Audrey was never that good at sustaining a pretence.

"Nathan," she says sharply. There's no need to pretend now.

He puts the spare coffee he's holding in front of her. Then he sits, not at his desk, but on the other side of hers. The name plaque that says _Audrey Parker_ is an ironic slap in the face.

She eyes the coffee like he might have spit in it. Then she lifts her eyes to the door. "I went with William to try to _help._ " Officer Bartlow is standing outside the door like a sentry, and has been since they returned. "William said he could show me how to alter Troubles. If that's true, then I could help so many more--"

"He wants you to turn back into his evil ex," Nathan corrects, "and he has some kind of influence over you. I've seen it."

"Screw you, Nathan."

Lexie's attitude problem makes Audrey's stubbornness more in-your-face then it ever was.

Nathan is tired. He was levered out of a hospital bed into a car crash into a battle. He hooks his arm over one side of the chair back and eases his body down a bit further, trying to not to bend too much at the waist, to ease the pressure on his ribs. 

Audrey sees it. She can't possibly have missed the massive bruise on his throat. "What the hell happened to you, anyway?" In all the affront, there's still a spark of concern.

"Your new boyfriend," is probably not a helpful response, in the circumstances. Nathan sighs and shuts his eyes, holding up a hand to stall her retaliation, breathes in and makes a more neutral and comprehensive attempt. "William did something with that latest round of Troubles that made Duke... crazed. Blood hungry."

"Yeah, and you two have been _dicks_ for the last week, so..." Her eyes fly wide, pinned on the bruise now. "Duke--?"

"He's in the hospital under sedation. Though he's..." Nathan grimaces. Truly, he doesn't know how Duke is. "I remember him being coherent when he carried me there."

Audrey breathes out again. "But... he did this?" Uncertainty takes over. "Did he... hurt anyone else?" Because if he'd do this to Nathan, then no-one would be safe. 

Nathan almost shakes his head, catches himself, and rasps, "No." He hopes that's the right answer, but he hasn't actually had chance to follow up yet. He had Duke out of his sight for no longer than a quarter hour before catching up to him on the shore. He doesn't think Duke had time to do anything else.

"Nathan," Audrey says sharply, "are you in _pain_?" Her face sort of freezes as she reads it in him. She knows what must have happened to make him Trouble-free. She swears. She reaches for the coffee he brought her and takes a few needy gulps, then glares at it. "Can I get something in this?" Her eyes move shiftily to the side. "Wait, never mind." She digs in a drawer and pulls out a small hip flask.

Nathan pulls away his own cup when she makes a move towards it. He's sure he's on too many painkillers to be adding alcohol to the mix, and it's already difficult enough trying to focus.

"So you... can feel," she reasons. "I mean, wow." There's a large dose of sarcasm in there. "Only, wow, right now it looks like that's 'feel like shit'."

"Some things aren't all they're cracked up to be." He reaches for her hand, on the table. "Audrey, I'm sor--"

"Don't you _dare."_ She seizes her hand back from him. "You don't _get_ to apologise, or look at me like that, like you can mend this with words. You and Duke did your own thing. Hey, it looks like at least you got on fine without me. In fact, it looks like you screwed everyone over to get me back and then chose Duke _anyway_." The words come harsh, loaded thick with venom, but at the same time her eyes sparkle wet, and Nathan gets the impression that these words have been suppressed for a long time. Lexie has spent almost two months in Haven.

It doesn't stop his insides feeling like they're growing ice crystals. He wants to protest that Duke would never have happened if he hadn't done everything else first, and this, he never _meant_ things to happen this way. It wasn't supposed to be what he and Duke were about.

What he and Duke were _supposed_ to be about got shattered on the rocks of that sea-cave, and Nathan doesn't know if they can salvage anything of the rest.

He hangs his head to hide his face from Audrey. He missed her, thought she was gone for good, and so much had _happened_ by the time he began to have doubts about her identity as Lexie. By then, the idea that it was still Audrey in there was too monolithically awful in the context of everything else. "I didn't mean to..."

" _Stop,_ Nathan, just _stop_ , okay?"

He wonders how many times it's reasonable for one life to crash and burn. Some part of him digs in enough to ask. "Why didn't you tell us? Fine, you didn't tell us in front of the Guard, but you could have told _us_."

"You wanted to _die._ They were going to use me to kill you. For all I knew, you'd let them. And after that, what would have been the point? I could see you were with Duke!"

Stubbornness stirs. "You were my partner and my friend. You let me believe that Lexie..." He thought Audrey was _dead_ and her replacement... didn't exactly _hate_ him, but certainly had no liking for him. He remembers all her annoying habits, all the get-at-Nathan pranks, paper spit-balls bouncing off his head while he tried to work and a hundred snide sexual slurs. "All that was you playing a game with me?"

"You don't get to talk!" She's standing up now, yelling in his face. Everyone in the station will hear it. "I came back for you! I crossed worlds for you, from some freaking disintegrating trans-dimensional Barn which was apparently _your fault_ , and you were fucking Duke! Your epic love that embraced murder and shattered the lives of who-knows how many Troubled people lasted, what, six months? Would that have been shorter still if Duke hadn't jumped in the Barn after me? What do you _want_ , Nathan, and how many people have to pay to ensure you get it?"

He slams his hands on the desk and follows her up. "I'm _trying--_ " But the movement doesn't stop when he reaches his feet. The world fluctuates like it's been put through a funhouse mirror, stretches and distorts. For a moment he's weightless. He can't account for the gap between that and being, suddenly, on the floor. Breathing hurts too much. He can't get enough air. 

Audrey, who a moment ago was ready to tear him to pieces, is frantically loosening his collar as she repeats his name. He also hears the words, " _I'm sorry,"_ in there, which doesn't seem very fair. None of this is Audrey's fault, who went willingly to surrender her existence for Haven.

He blinks up at her and hooks an arm over hers when she offers help. "Let's get you to the couch." Pulling on his shoulders hurts his chest. She curls an arm lower, around his hips, without confirming with words. Pain has become something visible and real on his body. 

Nathan sags into the couch as Audrey lays him down, rather gentler than Duke last did. He can feel the rings on her fingers at the back of his neck, hard and cool, though slightly warmed by her body heat, where once they would have just been an absence. The room turns slowly. He tries to speak but just gets a loud huff of air. Trying to suck in another breath proves more difficult than it should.

"I'm not sorry for being mad at you," Audrey adds. Her fingers cold on his neck, she touches his throat and they both hiss and flinch. "I just... today was... this is _not_ a good day. Hang in there." Her words sound like they're from a very long way away. The world doesn't seem real any more with sensation in it, and Audrey grips his hand tightly, but it's meaningless now.

He shuts his eyes. Reality wobbles. Duke's voice says, "Stay with me," but that's only a memory. Discrepant from all the rest, because in it, he can feel Duke's hands on his face, the way Audrey's are on his face now.

Or _not_ Audrey's, because pain slices through his neck and a harsher, older female voice grunts at him helpfully, "Steroid injection, Nathan, hon. They gave you one in the hospital, but it's worn off. The tissues in your throat swelled up too much. This should make breathing easier real soon."

Gloria pats his cheek. "You rest. You're just havin' a lie down in the office. All feel better when you wake up."

Nathan doesn't know how she thinks he's going to sleep when every breath is a struggle to suck in air, but she keeps talking to him, low and calm as she strokes his forehead, and her voice isn't soothing, and her hand is coarse and bony, but the world fades out all the same. 

***

Disturbing dreams coat the darkness, but the memories are harder. Every time he tries to pull his thoughts together and climb back up, Duke sets a hand to his throat and squeezes, tumbling him into delirium over again, pinning him with eyes that are silver and insane. Sensation assails him. This body, always his least worry, is more fragile than its ever been, too friable, too sensitive. _Need_ calls him, urging him up from the stupor. Haven is falling to pieces under the chaos William set in motion. He needs to help.

The Guard will kill him if he doesn't.

Every next Trouble isn't just expiation of guilt, but the right to keep breathing. Maybe that's why breathing got so hard... with so many Troubles running rampant, and himself unable to keep up. 

The Guard won't just kill him. They'll kill _Duke_.

Nathan wakes with a shock, one of those jolting, falling awakenings that steal breath, and he hadn't that to begin with. His throat feels like it shrank two sizes. He has movement back in his neck that he hadn't realised he'd lost. He rubs his eyes -- being able to judge pressure again knocks all his built-up mechanisms off balance and he jerks his hand away, finding he's unable to trust himself not to press too hard. 

The office is empty. Outside is quiet. The windows show night. Someone took his shoes off to tuck his feet into the end of the couch, and he can't put them back on, unable to bend that far around his broken ribs. His left arm feels like it's wired straight into the agony down that side of his chest, and he hugs it close to himself as he uses the other to help inch him up. Two tablets sit beside a glass of water on his desk. Gloria left him painkillers. He gulps them down, and drinks all the water. He feels dried out.

The silent, empty office is unsettling. He pads to the door and opens it. A skeleton crew of officers are left. They look up when he emerges. Officer Bartlow raises a hand like a nervous classroom volunteer. "Chief said to take you over to join them if you woke."

"Join who where?" Nathan rasps.

The morgue, it turns out, after Bartlow has helped Nathan tie his shoelaces and put on his jacket, and then driven him the five hundred yards he could have walked in as much time on any other day. He hunches into his jacket, feeling _cold_ , and leaves Bartlow with the car, taking the morgue steps one at a tortuous time, but he's damned if he's asking for help with that. The door at the top is open. He wanders in, following the glow of electric lights and low murmur of voices through the corridors.

Seeing Audrey on a slab almost gives him a heart attack.

Dwight spots him and crosses the room in two steps on his long legs, grabbing Nathan's shoulders. "She's alive. Heavy sedative. Paralytic on top of that. It was her idea."

To control _William_. Nathan understands, but--

He's bereft all over again. He barely had chance to speak to her and she's gone, just like Duke is _gone_. Severed from the world by artificial means, while where he stands with either of them is truly unknown.

Gloria lifts her head from checking equipment. There's a beeping monitor hooked up to Audrey, it's chirp reassuringly calm and regular. William is on another gurney. Jordan leans exhaustedly against the far wall, arms sagging, a weapon in the hand of each. Dwight casts Nathan a last look then goes to her, peels the guns from her fingers and puts them on a nearby counter, then folds her in his arms.

"We had to get 'Lexie' down before we could fetch William up," Gloria says. "Sorry, Nate. Sleeping through it seemed like the best thing for you. Figure it works like this -- if we keep both of 'em down, Lexie can't keep pulling William back up, whether she means to do it or not. Sucks donkey balls, I know. We could sure use the lass."

But Haven will still be safer for William being out of the picture. Nathan nods, numbed again by this blow.

He missed it. Audrey was _back_ : now she isn't. It's like she's Sleeping Beauty awoke from the curse just once to give him a glimpse of Audrey again, and before he even realised how temporary it was, too late to say any of the things he meant to, she's gone.

He looks at Audrey sleeping, pale faced. She's so deep under that the movements of her breath are barely detectable. Lexie's piercings aren't distorting her features any more -- for this, she's taken them out. He remembers her last words to him were begging him to live, even though right before he collapsed they'd both been hurling accusations at each other.

He doesn't know how to do this.

He doesn't know what to do _with_ this. He can't deal with this. Not _alone_ , and this, it... it isn't just _his_ to deal with. There are things he needs to know. The worst of them scare him half to death, but he needs to know them all the same. Last night, Duke held him down, fucked him and killed him, then brought him back. He needs to know what that means for Duke's sanity, and for both of them.

Audrey is locked away from him, but Audrey has been locked away from him for a long, long time, before she ever stepped into the Barn.

The Troubles won't wait, but they never do. There's always going to be something else he needs to be doing. But they've just put Audrey out of the action to keep William down, and Nathan is damned if he'll see Duke left to rot while the next crisis rolls out. 

"We need to go back to the hospital," he says roughly to Dwight. "To get Duke."

***

William levels them like ninepins, Nathan thinks, as he sits at Duke's bedside watching consciousness slowly start to return to his form. Himself, Duke, Dwight, now Audrey... Jordan's their only fighter who hasn't been put out of the game entirely for a stretch of the last twenty-four hours. Maybe Lexie's and Gloria's plan will at least give them a breather... But chances are William already set enough in motion to keep them busy. There are still the Glendowers, on top of everything else.

"I wasn't looking forward to him waking up without you here," Dwight admits, standing by the door. Dwight must have a million better things to do than hover around to protect Nathan from his own boyfriend, but it isn't as though Nathan hasn't already pointed that out.

Nathan catches Duke's hand, where it's lying on top of the bedclothes, having to lean to do it, shifting stiffly in his chair. Sitting down necessitates hanging his ass off the very edge of the seat and leaning far back with his shoulders, lest he pressure his strapped ribs and other painful parts.

The worst isn't even really the _pain_. Discomfort is going to drive him insane. A million little different sources of it. His bladder, starting to twinge again after the coffees in the waiting room. An itch at the back of his skull. There's a persistent ache in the hand that got cut up dealing with the clay golems, that he never knew about, and weird twinges that play through his frequently broken toes, that he did.

"I don't remember arriving here with Duke," Nathan murmurs, "only being carried from the beach."

Dwight grimaces. "There are still Glendowers out there we haven't rounded up. I don't know where we're going to keep them when Sal Brody's aquarium fills up. I don't know what we're going to _feed_ them. They're still... human... underneath. We could have really used Duke making that last kill. Sorry."

"William knows exactly who to target." The biggest family in Haven, and a hundred crazed mer-people savaging tourists and fishermen. Not that there are many tourists in Haven these days. "He's connected to the Troubles somehow, and he can't just alter them, he can make them. He threatened to give me another." Nathan had forgotten that, in the heat of the moment.

"And William is connected to Audrey."

Both of them sit there, thinking it, saying nothing. Until Nathan makes himself. "She's always known too much. About what drives them, and how the rules work." 

Duke's fingers twitch beneath his. Nathan jerks his head up to Duke's face. Eyes, brown and not silver. Open. Muzzily trying to focus on him. "...Nathan..."

Duke, coming up from analgesia, isn't really fast enough to surprise Nathan with his clutching arms. He sees them coming. He has a good, long moment to make the decision of whether he's going to go toward Duke or flinch away from him.

He doesn't flinch, but Duke does. Maybe Duke sees how much effort he's putting in not to. Before they can make contact, Duke jerks back, eyes widening and his breath starting to come in audible, panicked bursts. "God. _No._ Nathan, you... you need to get _away_ from me!"

The declaration is so earnest, so tortured, that Nathan actually stands and backs off. He feels Dwight's hands curl on his shoulders when he's nearing the door, warm and heavy. "Duke..." He's numb again, his body stiff and dead to him. He feels like stone inside. "You..." _You won't hurt me_ dies on his lips. That's an untenable claim. "What _happened?"_ is what he asks instead, his voice almost disappearing.

Duke stares back at him, eyes and hair wild, face pale. The nurses have cleaned all the blood off, and there aren't any visible injuries to suggest any of it was his, but he still looks feral. His fingers clutch in the sheets, all joints and bone, and one leg braces on the edge of the mattress, the other on the floor. It's a fight or flight pose. Like that, he's also flashing both of them, though Dwight keeps his face blank. Duke has also placed the bulk of the bed between himself and Nathan. A few stray wires swing loose. 

"You don't know?" Duke responds, like it's a challenge. His eyes scan Nathan up and down, looking for marks. They alight on his throat and fix there. Duke's expression flattens out, as if he wasn't sure of everything he'd done himself, until now.

"I don't know _why._ "

Dwight being there is awkward. But Nathan is sure Dwight has experienced much more traumatising things than their relationship's dark underbelly. "I went after you... to talk you around, but you were wild for the blood." The only reason they have managed to keep Duke in control for this long, with the souped-up Troubles William has been throwing at them, is Nathan's Troubled blood, ready and willing in his bed every night. "I couldn't get you to reason, this time. You just wanted me. You f-- we fucked, and then you..." Duke's hand around his throat, squeezing until the _crunch_ surprised both of them. Then Duke's hand over his mouth. Nathan's hand has risen to his throat now, and Duke can't miss the gesture. "You killed me. Then brought me back." It had been the resurgence into life that brought the pain. More of it than Nathan was built to handle.

Duke sobs and puts his hands over his face. He slides down onto the floor, the bed still between them, and buries his face and hands in the mattress. 

"Duke," Nathan exclaims, alarmed. It, like everything else, comes out like the volume's been turned down on his voice and he can't adjust the dial. He moves forward, but Dwight catches him and won't let him go. "I'm not dead. But I need to understand _what happened."_

"I couldn't," Duke moans, muffled. "I _couldn't._ Nathan, I... I didn't know what I was doing."

Nathan starts to angrily shake his head; regrets it quickly. "You were _sane_ toward the end. Saner. Damn it, Duke, make me understand! You took my Trouble. _Why?_ "

Duke rises up, fist pressed over his mouth, bloody-knuckled. "Wasn't thinking about killing you. Not like -- didn't _want to_ kill--!" He shakes his head, denying, frantic. "Nathan! Next time... _later_... The next time something crazy happened and they sent you, or you came after me. The next time we were in bed and I could _smell it_ in your veins. Next time... _some_ time... it would happen. It was going to happen! I had to! But I nearly--"

Dwight swears under his breath behind Nathan's left ear, maybe too soft for Duke to catch.

Nathan's legs sag. He slides out of Dwight's attempt to catch him and slips to his knees.

"I wasn't _making sense_ ," Duke growls. "I fucking nearly killed you! I'd already pounded the hell out of you. I _did_ kill you! And I couldn't get you _back_... I was so close -- so _fucking close_ to killing you for real. It's not the amateur CPR that brings people back. That's just TV. It's the -- it's buying time for when the doctors arrive with all their shit. I _know that_ , and I... I could have left it and done it in a hospital, with Gloria on standby, and I didn't because... because even in that state, I knew you'd say _'no'_! I was rational enough to know _that_ , and yet--"

"Duke," Nathan says, his voice half a sigh. "You're not making sense _now_. You said you were a threat to me, but..." He spreads his hands. "I'm not Troubled. You did it."

Duke makes a gurgling sound and tries to curl in on himself like a slow worm, against the side of the bed.

Nathan says, from his knees, "Fuck you, Duke, if you did this to me and you're going to make me be the one trying to pull _you_ back together."

That jerks Duke's head up, startled anguish and outrage animating him, jolting life back into his features.

"I don't have the energy," Nathan chokes out. He's horrified to find hot trails streaking down his cheeks. Jesus Christ, _Dwight_ is there. "Duke, _please._ I... I can't..." He can't do this without him. As for what they did, it was dangerous, stupid and _necessary_ , playing loose with both their sanity when all the fucked-up edges had only just been starting to smooth off their relationship before that. But in the circumstances, what they did held back the Troubles and fought off William's campaign to turn Lexie -- _Audrey_! -- into who-knew-what for almost two weeks.

It was always going to end like this.

No. It was going to end _worse than this._

They're both still alive.

Duke is looking at him with dull eyes that are... not in the best place, still, but they're not silver, and Nathan doesn't think they look crazy.

Then, with an inarticulate noise, Duke rolls across the bed and is scrambling to catch Nathan up in his arms. The hospital gown and sedative-clumsiness and Nathan's paucity of available pain-free movements get in the way, and Dwight curses them both, " _God damn it! He has three broken ribs and some fucked up neck injury only corpses get! Crocker!!"_ But then Duke is gathering Nathan in with his hands in the centre of his back, and lips are on his, warm and soft, and someone else's warm, living breath breathes into his mouth. Nathan sobs and clings back to Duke, drinking it in. The breath, the softness, the warmth. Tickling beard against the side of his face. Long hair under his fingers. The scent is more antiseptic than he's used to, but familiar enough underneath.

Kisses pull at his lips, dry-wet, warm-hot, air exposure cold, salt and copper taste, rough tongue and smooth skin and the unexpected tangly dry-hard oddness of hair in the way. Sensation floods Nathan, takes him away from just _pain._ Duke pulls him up higher from their knelt position, so he's straddling naked thighs and Duke's arms can wrap tight with impunity around his uninjured waist and hips, instead of having to treat his chest like it's made of glass. Nathan rests his head on the top of Duke's head, and Duke is careful to bury his in Nathan's shoulder, and not his throat. 

Duke doesn't need to be told where Nathan is injured.

"Alive," Duke mumbles into his jacket. "Shit. I killed you. Shit..."

Dying did not hurt, but being alive again has been very painful, until now. Nathan is going to choose to take that as a sign. He slides his hands up Duke's shoulders to lift his face. "Let's go home." He means the _Rouge_. It has to be at least midnight. And Duke is not going to be up to anything to help combat the Troubles tonight, if ever again. _Nathan_ isn't going to be up to much tonight, either. Maybe more than this, but he's going to choose to be selfish. A day ago, he died. "Let's go home together."

*** 

Dwight is uneasy with it, but drives them to the marina anyway. Duke's truck was at the hospital, but has been towed away for causing an obstruction. Nathan's Ford Bronco is presumably still parked out by Wistlow Sands, where Duke went hunting Glendowers and Nathan went hunting Duke. When they arrive at the marina, Duke's truck is waiting there ahead of them -- Nathan didn't realise, when Stan said it had been towed, that he meant he had towed it home. Thought of the Bronco drifts across his mind, abandoned on its lonely foreshore, but he's too dead-beat to do more than push the thought away.

They don't touch on the drive, but Nathan curls his fingers into Duke's hand again the moment they've disembarked. "We'll be all right," he says to Dwight, standing next to the rolled-down window. "I'll..." He's not going to promise anything for Duke. "I'll report into work in the morning."

Dwight says, "Have you got your pills?"

Since he already knows Nathan has them, he's asking that specifically so Duke knows, too. It's unclear whether his intention is to make the point of how badly Nathan came out of this one, or if he doesn't trust Nathan to take medication without prompting. But Gloria warned that without the anti-inflammatories he could end up struggling to breathe again, and the painkillers really aren't a problem to remember.

He responds wryly, "I'm fine, Dwight."

There's still a notable hesitation before the big guy turns his head away and starts the engine, unhappy to leave Nathan with the man who already left him like this.

"Wow," mumbles Duke, staring after the truck. "I guess I can't claim not to see where he's coming from."

"He's wrong," Nathan says, with a touch of ill temper. "Nothing will happen to me with you."

The word _anymore_ is invisible and heavy on the end there.

"I'm still not sure I don't agree with him." Duke is too low-key, subdued, hurting, and Nathan could have things to say to Dwight about giving him reason to feel worse, if he were in any condition for taking on a giant. They did this together and Duke would not have used Nathan for blood -- for battle and, in the end, just for blood -- if Nathan had not urged him to do so.

"Shut up," he says wearily. The rest, Duke knows by rote.

"We rode the whirlwind." Duke sighs as they slouch dejectedly and painfully across the short distance to the _Cape Rouge._ "Got chewed up and spat out. That's the nature of whirlwinds."

"If you start quoting Buddha, so help me..."

Duke coughs a laugh. "I can think of a few other philosophers more appropriate."

"Please don't." Nathan's head can't take that, on top of everything else.

They get inside, Duke opening the doors. The boat is cold and feels almost unlived-in. It has been over twenty-four hours since Nathan found Duke gone and left after him. It feels like a lifetime. 

They stand in the galley and Duke gently teases Nathan's jacket off at the shoulders, not a part of a seduction, just an aid of necessity. He tries not to give away too much as Duke guides it off his left side, but is unpractised when it comes to hiding pain reactions.

"I am so, _so_ sorry." Duke leans in and kisses the corner of his jaw.

"It's living that hurts." Nathan shakes his head and refuses to repeat the murmured words when Duke fails to catch them. There's something more important they need to establish. "Do you... feel like you still need the blood now?" Because if he does, they have a problem. Because Nathan can't give that to him anymore.

Duke thinks about it, sombrely, and answers seriously, none of his customary glibness in sight. That's a little unnerving, but then he's been awake less than two hours. "No... no, Nathan. That was a very sobering experience. I think a glass of red wine should be more than adequate for tonight." He grimaces. "As for food, I think I have a pack of rice cakes somewhere, but cooking is seriously not happening."

Guardedly, Nathan asks, "Do you have a can of soup?" Duke double-takes, sighs, and leans on the kitchen counter heavily for a moment before he reaches up into a cupboard and pulls a couple of cans from the back. "Oxtail or asparagus?"

As it's starting to bubble on the ring, he turns around and asks, "What did I do to your throat, again? Isn't the hyoid the bone that always breaks in CSI when...?" He trails off.

"Strangulation," Nathan picks up. "About a third, in reality, so pretty much always, on TV." He broods. "Gloria says it should fix without any other treatment than the pills, in a few weeks. If I don't screw it up any further." She said those words.

"When your neck made that god-awful crunch, I thought I'd done something unfixable." Duke shudders. 

"How clearly do you remember it?" Nathan asks -- he's alarmed by how Duke is able to talk about it with such _clarity._

"Like it happened on TV," Duke admits. He turns and plays with the soup pan. "Like I was watching it happen, but it wasn't really me in control. I remember it all pretty clearly. What happened before that, too." He says that with stony emphasis.

"Did I initiate it?" Nathan asks. It's been bothering him that he can't remember. It could be important.

Duke stops, thinks, and heaves a sigh. It's only partly relief. There's not a hell of a lot of relief to be had, here. "Yeah. Yeah, I think you did. But that's no excuse." He grabs in another cupboard, takes out a bottle of wine, pops the cork and pours out a glass. He drinks half of it without pausing.

"The whirlwind, remember," Nathan reminds him, stiffly. 

"Fuck the whirlwind."

They eat together almost in silence, after that. Duke puts peanut butter on his rice cakes and crunches like he's on a mission. Nathan drinks his soup. Their fingers play together in the centre of the table. Nathan relearns the feel of angular cutlery and a bowl too hot to hold.

It's already 1AM by the time they go to bed. Duke undresses tiredly from the borrowed clothes he wore out of the hospital. Nathan kicks off his shoes clumsily and eases his pants off, but he leaves his shirt on, just unbuttoning the cuffs and a few buttons at the top, then rolling up the sleeves.

"What are you doing?" Duke asks when he climbs into bed like that.

"Because there's no need to _dwell_ on it." Because Duke is all raw nerve endings and there are unbandaged cuts on Nathan's chest that were not made in the pursuit of saving his life, even if some of them are older than the previous night. "Besides, it'll help to protect the strapping on the ribs."

Duke can't argue with that. He sighs and collapses back, a sprawl of limbs; stares up at the wooden ceiling and the skylight. "Do you want a blow job?"

Nathan grunts and shuts his eyes, sighs and wriggles tentatively and painfully, searching for a comfortable way to lie in the bed. "No, but I'd really like a foot rub."

Duke grumbles, "If _I_ hadn't felt anything in three or four years, I'd want a blow job."

It's... too much. And not necessary. Nathan thinks he could get off on any light, loving touch at the moment. " _Duke._ " There's the barest hint of a wheedling plea in the reproach.

"All right." Duke rolls down the bed and curls around Nathan's feet, picking them up. He pulls the socks off first with a snort. Nathan was going to drag them off against the mattress and kick them away, rather than having to bend with his broken ribs, but he forgot. Duke slides his whole palms down to the soles of both feet first, and Nathan moans. The palms tense but move and start to make slow circles. Nathan wriggles and makes a noise he is subsequently aware was somewhat pathetic.

"Oh," Duke says, like he just realised something. "When I stop feeling like shit about this, this... This is going to be _fun._ Sorry."

Nathan is drifting in a cloud of fluff. He took a couple more pills before they came to bed, which may be part of it. Duke's hands are warm against his feet, and that -- he drags open his eyes for a second -- _that_ was Duke breathing softly out over his toes. That feeling could be this good is something he'd forgotten. 

The Guard are going to be furious when they realise he's shed his Trouble, while they still have theirs. There are things he hasn't told Duke yet and desperately needs to. But for the moment, he needs this.

Needs to find out if they can put themselves back together before he starts to examine the rest.

***

Nathan wakes in the night as Duke carelessly shifts and throws an arm over him, to a flashback of being held down while silver eyes leer into him, and he sits up, shoving away with both arms and a hoarse yell.

While it's not something he'll never live down, Duke's dismay and anguish is painful to him. Nathan doesn't sleep well that night in general. The blankets scrape his skin. He's too warm, too cold; the actual pain is almost beside the point. There is too much _feeling_ , and it overwhelms him, wrecks him, stretches him out at the mercy of the world. Without him realising it, the Trouble he'd hated had become a shield of sorts. Bereft now, he's vulnerable to so much again. Certainly it helped him to work to quell other Troubles.

They only sort of sleep through the latter half of the night. Duke goes from being dozy from the sedatives still in his system to restless because he's slept most of the last twenty-four hours away already. 

Nathan gives up trying, eventually, blinking his eyes open in the dawn haze filtering down through Duke's skylight. He's been aware of the stiffness in his neck for a while, and he needs to take more pills before it turns into a problem. Duke's brown eyes are watching him softly, like they've been watching a while. Duke waits until he can see him do it before sliding a fingertip over the back of Nathan's hand, and then down his arm, where it's sprawled between them.

Nathan wonders if he realises what he just did.

He sits up and takes the pills, carefully. The world is steadier this side of the night. The pain is -- different; not better, but stiffer, more solid, less liquid and flowing and unpredictable. He very quickly figures out which movements hurt, what he needs to avoid. Turning his head much at all comes top of the list.

"Can I kiss you?" Duke asks. He's never asked before.

"Yeah," Nathan replies, shortly. "But just so you know, I'm not planning on moving much." And after killing him and stealing his Trouble, it is definitely Duke's turn to make the coffee.

Duke moves carefully, slow and watching for Nathan's reactions. He apparently doesn't like what he sees when he moves to straddle his knees either side of Nathan's stretched-out legs, or when he tries to lean across to brace a hand on the pillow the other side of Nathan instead. Being pinned down is still a bad memory. In the end, Duke delivers the kiss leaning awkwardly beyond his centre of balance, with one hand braced on his side of the headboard. 

"Do you want that blow job, now?"

Nathan decides that might as well be the potentially last thing they do together. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah." Maybe they're not irrevocably broken, but he has no way of knowing if the bruised remnant will survive Audrey's return, and Duke doesn't know about that yet.

Duke slides Nathan's knees apart, very slowly. Finds him half hard and the simplest of touches gets him the rest of the way with ease.

"Careful," Nathan warns. It's going to be quick, unfortunately.

Duke takes it very gently, the first sexual act Nathan's been able to feel since -- since Sarah, and maybe he should've started to question his preferences back when he had as much staying power as he _did_ with Sarah, considering that was his first sexual touching in three years. For Duke, he can't hold back. The release floods over him, and he tries not to jerk his hips into Duke's face, for the sake of his ribs as much as Duke.

Who swallows and coughs. "Seems like we have to relearn this all over again."

"Maybe," Nathan hedges. "I need to get up." He wonders how he can shower around his strapped ribs. "I need to call Dwight." He _needs_ to tell Duke about Audrey. Maybe he shouldn't have gone for the one last blow job. He reaches across for his phone on the nightstand and catches a whiff of his own underarm... Okay, he _really_ needs to shower. Duke's being polite and guilty not complaining.

He gives Duke a frown, calls Dwight, and starts off with an apology when the big guy answers, "Chief Hendrickson," so promptly he must already be at his desk: "I'm sorry, Dwight. Yesterday was--" Too much in a myriad of ways. Yet he left Dwight to the remnant of it, to go home and sleep with Duke.

"Are you okay?" Dwight interrupts sharply.

"Fine," Nathan says. He's sitting on the side of the bed, legs braced wide, in only his shirt. Duke's fingers have started sliding gentle circles up underneath his shirt, over his lower back. Nathan swallows and shivers. Dwight was really concerned for his safety last night. "What's happening?"

A heavy sigh from the other end of the line, but he can _hear_ Dwight enter a more casual mode. "The remnant seismic activity's died right down. I've had that geophys guy with the bad attitude that you and Audrey used before down from Camden, just to make sure the ground is stable. He's freaking out over volcanoes in Maine. But the lava's cooling. You can almost walk across it now."

"That'll make an interesting new feature for the tourists." Nathan huffs an only-in-Haven snort of laugh. It's still not really funny. 

"Amazing we don't have more fatalities... two confirmed deaths from the volcano Trouble so far, anyway, but there was another Glendower attack during the night. And we've got two more Glendowers penned in the aquarium, now. We need a better answer, because we're almost out of space, and if we put them together they might start killing each other."

Nathan shudders. He knows what Dwight wants to say. He can't turn his head, but he _feels_ Duke, down through the gentle touch on his back, and shuts his eyes, focusing on that. He's not strong enough for any other answer but, "No. We only just got him back this time." A thought hits him, taking away his breath. "What about--?"

He stops himself from mentioning Wade's name with Duke in earshot. Wade is in jail, and in substantial amounts of therapy, some of it provided by Claire Callahan's replacement, Anna Benedict, who visits Shawshank from Haven at least once a week. They are trying to save Wade, even though he killed two women and tortured a police officer.

Nathan would trade in Wade's sanity to save Duke in a heartbeat. Duke _would not._ So yes, he is going to talk to Dwight about this. But he will do it later. It won't be a solution anyone likes, but if Wade Crocker kills a Glendower, at least they'll stop finding half-devoured human and animal corpses washed up on Haven's shores.

Nathan changes the subject. "Have people been able to go back to their homes?" Last update he had, they were camped out in the church -- Reverend Driscoll's old church. It's a churning worry, given the past record of the clergy in Haven, having all those victims there -- a situation rife for sowing discontent about the Troubles and Troubled. Although the Rev's replacement has yet to give Nathan any problems.

"Some," Dwight hedges, tersely, likely thinking the same thing. "When, uh... when do you think you can come in? I can't have you out and about, not in your physical state, but I could use someone manning a desk here who can deal with every type of... incident."

"Give me an hour." Duke pokes him, in revenge for foolish promises. "And, Dwight... thanks." He is relieved to be forgiven for absenting himself yesterday, for choosing Duke over Haven. He had promised himself he wouldn't repeat the mistakes he made over Audrey, but maybe some mistakes repeat and repeat, and can't be avoided. Maybe that's just how love is. He cuts the call and sighs, sagging back on his hands. "Will you _please_ stop poking me?"

"I," Duke solemnly declares, "will never get tired of poking you." Especially now Nathan can feel it again, apparently.

Nathan stands up and glares at the full length mirror on the wall -- the one that's pointless, now, because they put it there so he could check himself for unnoticed scrapes and cuts before getting into bed with Duke. He lifts his arms, the left one only so far as he's able, and critically eyes the strapping on his ribs. 

He says, "Help me tie a plastic bag over this, so I can go in the shower."

***

He tells Duke about Audrey as they're sitting down opposite each other at the breakfast table, after the shower. Duke... Nathan really thought that Duke would react badly, not the least because Nathan waited until now to tell him, but he doesn't react much at all. There's a kind of resignation in his flatness. Duke also knew. He asks, "What will you do?" and Nathan has to admit that he doesn't know.

Duke reacts worse to being told why he can't speak to Audrey. "That's diabolical. We can't just leave her like that!"

"Her plan," Nathan says. 

"Since when has that stopped you--" Duke shuts up so hard he almost swallows his tongue.

"We don't have a choice," Nathan says. "William will destroy Haven to get what he wants. He almost _did._ At least this way we have a chance to rebuild before we have to do it all over again."

"...Without me." Duke stands up and he leans his hands on the table, where they clench and unclench. His head is ducked down, his eyes squeezed shut. So Duke did catch that.

"You were this close to becoming something else we'd have to fight." Nathan slides the spoon around the remnant of his porridge, and when he looks up again, Duke's eyes are open.

"Not close," Duke corrects. "I don't know what would've happened if I'd found someone else before I'd found you." Dwight would probably no longer be having a problem with Glendowers, at least, Nathan thinks grimly. Duke continues, "We both know it's only a matter of time before something bad enough to need the Crocker Curse comes up again. This town always finds _something_. Last year I swore I'd never use it at all. And then..."

" _No_ ," Nathan snaps. Then he has to stop and get hold of himself, climb down... and put the porridge spoon back on the edge of the bowl. Both of them eye the splatter, standing facing each other across the table now. "All right. _If_ that happens, then I'll be there. Only this time I _won't_ be ten pints of Trouble to feed your addiction."

Maybe that sounded too much of an accusation. Duke flinches. Anger ripples through Nathan with the flinch. Maybe Duke wasn't thinking clearly -- not thinking, at least, of the overwhelming chances that Nathan would end up dead courtesy of this plan to 'save' him -- but there's still a decision in there that Duke made. He took Nathan's Trouble away rather than face having to control himself for every future day and night he spent with Nathan.

"You're right," Duke says, breathing himself back to control. Meditation techniques. Nathan has seen a lot of those over the last two weeks. "Knowing I won't cut you or kill you for the blood _really does_ make me feel that much better." He gives it an edge of challenge.

Nathan thinks, _How dare he sound so self-righteous_.

He wonders if Duke even realises that he didn't want this.

Something happened in his months on the run. Somehow, out there in the motels and truck stops, in the drunken haze, he reconciled himself to not feeling, accepted it as his due penance and punishment. He had no right to expect to feel again, no right to want to.

He has no idea how he will ever face the Guard.

But he shouldn't be arguing with Duke, after Duke has just been pulled back from the brink of madness. Duke was still a long way from his normal self when he made the decision to take Nathan's Trouble from him. "The question is what we're going to do about Audrey," he says, tersely, and pauses. "We could... just continue... until she wakes." That's just putting it off, but realistically, Nathan doesn't have the energy to do this now. He hasn't enough energy, period, and hasn't _any_ to spare. To choose Duke, or to break up with Duke... A chill wash of feeling all but paralyzes him. His heart pounds much too fast and loud for a man used to feeling nothing. It's the small things, he's learning, that make him feel fragile now. The things that are real and always there, because his injuries will go away.

"Then we change nothing," Duke says. Darkness lurks in the back of his eyes. "We have time... _fuck_ , Nathan, I did not just kill you for _nothing._ "

Nathan bares his teeth back. It's not a grin, it's not a snarl, it's not anything. They've spent enough time dancing around, not quite committing to tearing into each other, but neither content with affairs as they stand. Too much has happened. Too much coercion, need, violence, force, blood, _pain._ Nathan sags his shoulders. His ribs creak. He hugs his left arm in, holds it with his right. "I have to get to work." He couldn't win a shouting match with Duke right now anyway. He told Dwight an hour. Haven is falling apart and there isn't time for the two of them. Things may look better later, anyway.

Nathan takes a deliberate breath. He takes out and toys with his keys and gets as far as wondering if he can drive before he remembers where the Bronco _is_ and groans. "Will you go to the _Gull_?" he asks, strongly implying in his tone that he'd prefer Duke went. The thought of leaving him alone in the _Cape Rouge_ all day, under the circumstances...

"I'll drive you to the station and go on to there," Duke says, putting his hand over Nathan's and firmly pushing the keys down. "Seriously, you _weren 't_ intending to drive today?" He sighs, then relaxes and stands down the annoyance fixing his posture into such rigid lines. "I dread to think what's happened to my menus by now." 

It's been at least a week since Duke put his head in at his restaurant. Nathan's relieved to see him give a damn. "All right." 

When they emerge from the _Rouge_ the Bronco is sitting outside next to Duke 's white truck, innocuous and improbable. Surely no-one would have had _time_. 

Nathan stops in his tracks and stares at it, until he makes the effort to drag his focus away and finds Duke looking at him moodily. He decides that, no, he probably doesn't want to drive anyway, with the painful movements in his left arm and neck. He can't turn without moving his whole body. Peripheral vision is a joke. It probably _was_ insanity to even contemplate it.

"All _right_ ," he mumbles again, raising his hands in mock surrender. As far as they'll go.

***

Duke drops him off in front of the station and gets out to kiss him, to save on bending down. They don't worry about the public setting any more. Folks in Haven have more things to worry about than men kissing in the street. Though he might get a few gripes that it's not proper for a police detective.

Then Duke is moving away from him, and it's simultaneously the biggest relief and makes the day ahead look a colourless and wearying prospect without him.

Nathan turns away and then back to watch Duke's disappearing truck. He has Tracey's number on his cellphone, and in half an hour or so he intends to call it, and make sure that Duke did go to the _Gull_. He seems okay today, but one day last week he admitted to sitting outside Marion Caldwell's shop for hours, talking himself out of going after her blood, and that was _before_ he went out to hunt Glendowers and ended up catching Nathan.

Nathan walks up the steps into the police station. It's quiet. He's later than he said he'd be, and probably most of their manpower is taken up by the established crises. Lexie's desk -- it's Audrey's desk; it has never been anyone else's -- is empty and accusing. Dwight's left a note on Nathan's desk that reads, _See me when you come in._ Trying not to feel like a naughty schoolboy, Nathan heads straight back out of his door and turns into the Chief's office off the corridor.

Jordan and Dwight's bowed heads jerk up at his arrival.

"You left a... note," Nathan uncertainly offers.

"Right." Dwight slaps his hand on the table and stands up. "Thanks for coming in, Nathan." The gaze that looks him up and down apparently finds him more convincing than yesterday. Point of fact, Nathan still feels rough, but he can breathe and the pain that slips through around the edges of the pills is... not quite _real_ to him, in a way.

"Mm." He finds some kind of focus. "Thanks for the Bronco." He probably can't hide the archness in his gaze, though, that the town is falling apart and Dwight wasted manpower on that.

"Actually, it was Jordan." At Nathan's loss for any response, and Jordan huffing as her chin rises to avert her gaze, Dwight elaborates, "She needed a time-out, kept asking me for a job to do. I was as surprised as you look right now when she took that one."

"Uh..." He feels the way his mouth twists, forming his expression, as he slides his eyes to her. That's as strange a realisation as the rest of this.

Jordan twists her own mouth right back at him. "No need to overwhelm me with gratitude, Nathan."

"I'd like you to work from in here, today," Dwight says, shuffling a few Dwight-specific items to one corner of his desk.

" _What_?" They've had two months of subtle sniping at each other over this desk, and now Dwight's giving it away?

Dwight rolls his eyes knowingly. "Don't get comfortable. But there's too much going on and I need someone right here who's able to make decisions at all levels. If I can't send you out right now, then that role has to fall to me."

Nathan nods. But this is more than a desk. It's almost co-captaincy.

"I don't trust William to stay down," Dwight adds. "We need to make the most of this breather while we have it. Fix as much as we damned well can before the next onslaught. That means focus." He frowns, and turns his head a few times as if missing something. "Crocker..."

"Duke's at work. At the _Grey Gull_."

Dwight takes that declaration dourly in his stride.

"I've got spies among his bar staff," Nathan adds for reassurance. "They'll let me know if anything goes... awry. " He drinks in a deep breath. "Wade Crocker... you might want to think about it."

Jordan gives a sharp gasp. Maybe that does count as insensitive.

"Duke can't take any more," Nathan asserts. "It's going to be hard enough to fix the damage that's already been done."

"I understand. I'll think about Wade." Dwight gives Jordan a reassuring glance before looking back to Nathan. "I _wish_ killing a Glendower was still only a possibility, but this morning was one corpse too many. I don't care how much history they have in this town, that they didn't choose to become monsters, that it isn't fair. We need to stop _all_ of them. The Crocker Curse is the only way I know to do that."

"William might know of more," Nathan says grimly, thinking about William's teasing threat again.

"Kick him in the nuts until he folds," Jordan says acerbically. "I'll volunteer."

For a fleeting moment, Nathan wonders if they _could_ attach some electrodes to William's testicles. Then again, the implication is he's been tortured by experts in other dimensions. Chances are they compromise themselves and it doesn't work. Nathan grunts noncommittally, though maybe he'll use that next time he's face to face with the bastard. It'd be apt enough, since his ass is still sore and William targeted him and Duke explicitly through their relationship. "The only one he's really going to tell anything is Audrey."

"We can't afford to lose Audrey." Dwight bores fingers into his own forehead tiredly. "From everything William's indicated, it's a game-changer if he gets what he wants."

"She fucking _went to him_ ," Jordan says. "She was going to stay with him. The man's the biggest sleazeball I ever met, and that is not normal. He has some kind of hold over her. We can't let her near him." She glances at the clock on the wall. "We need to go. The Guard will be there already."

"Fine," Dwight grumbles. "Nathan... Gloria wants to see you. She'll probably head in around lunchtime. This morning she's running some more tests on William, while she can." There's enough of a falter there that Nathan knows it is William _and Audrey_ the tests are being run on. "We're heading out to hunt Glendowers. Someone caught a sighting up on Gavil Cove."

"Good luck." Nathan stands by Dwight's desk and watches them step in sync for the door.

Dwight swings back. "Oh, we fixed the killer trees. Power's still off some places around the fault zone where the lines got cut. Gas and phone, and sewerage, too. People are out there dealing with it."

He stops again at the door. "I got three hours sleep last night," he tells Nathan. "That's an improvement on the night before."

" _Dwight_ ," Nathan rasps. "I've got your... paperwork."

"Good man." Then Dwight is gone, the door swinging shut behind him. 

Nathan isn't an agent to stop Troubles anymore: he's an administrative extension of Dwight. Did the Guard sanction this? Does he really seem so broken this is all he's good for? That even the Guard understand it's too much to ask more of him now? Or maybe the Guard are just too distracted dealing with other things. Can he assume, in the light of this, that Dwight will stick up for him if people break out in another round of "let's kill Nathan Wuornos" to try and morale-boost, later?

He sits down at Dwight's desk and pulls the paperwork in front of him. God, he'd forgotten about this. He's instantly faced with how to write up strangle trees and fishmen murders and a crack opening up in the centre of a quiet Maine resort in any way that the outside world will understand, and it's...

It's kind of soothing, to be honest.

He falls back into it like he never left.

He checks up on Duke a while later, and then at lunchtime. Gloria comes armed with a bag of medical supplies, feels his throat and checks his ribs, replenishes his pills and cheerfully tells him he's good to go, and she'll check back again later. Maybe there's too much determination in her cheer. 

"How's Audrey?" he asks, and she responds, "Snoring."

Then she leaves and in the quiet of the office -- even the phone has given up its hounding buzz -- Nathan drifts on the buffer of a fresh pain pill and thinks about everything that brought him to this point. All the things he and Duke did, and shouldn't have done, _knew_ they shouldn't have done, but also knew they needed doing, so did them anyway. That descent into impossible choices. His own desires, twisted to begin with, matched to Duke's desires increasingly skewed by blood and need. They did this to _themselves_. To each other. William knew just where to apply pressure to make them do it.

Nathan wonders why.

It was meant to be about Audrey. Yet this was personal in so many ways. William could've sent Troubles so large-scale the Crocker Curse would have been laughable or plain useless against them. _Nathan_ can think of things William could have done that wouldn't let Duke near enough to the Trouble's source to draw blood, let alone strike. He can create monsters with those black spheres. He could have made something they couldn't fight. Instead, he sent enemies it was possible to combat, curses it was possible to kill, forcing them to try, driving them to their limits.

William has at least once in Nathan's hearing referred to them as 'flies'. So, if he can, why doesn't he just _swat them?_

He seemed to take some affront to the "unintentionally complementary" nature of their two Troubles, the first time he saw them fight, but it also amused him. Nathan doesn't think that's the reason.

Lexie spent time with William. She met him in the Barn. Nathan has always trusted Lexie because she was the woman who used to be Audrey -- even when she didn't like him, and he didn't like her, he _trusted_ her, thought that there was an innate goodness, a will to do the right thing, that had stayed with her. Ironically, now he knows Lexie was always Audrey, that faith is assailed. It's hard to think of her as Audrey in the past tense, when he spent so much time thinking of her as _different_. But... Lexie met William in the Barn. She'd already encountered him back in Haven _before_ she introduced him to the rest of them. Nathan has no way of knowing how many times she saw him, and what they talked about.

He remembers she didn't want to leave William's side at the fault zone.

It is absolutely possible she knows more than she's let on. But Audrey chose to put herself out of the action to take William down, and that can't be a ruse. She did it after being directly faced with the results of what William had done to Duke and Nathan.

The 'connection' between Audrey and William puts chill in Nathan's veins, but they haven't lost her yet.

Unfortunately, whatever she knows is locked away with William, for however many days or weeks they have before the reprieve comes to an end.

They are counting time.

They need every bit of it they have to _recover._

Nathan sits and thinks back, and the past two weeks are a _blur_.

He can't isolate how he and Duke fell so far so fast. The more he thinks over it, the less sense it makes, the more hazy the past week or more becomes. Hadn't they been climbing back? After Wade... after Jordan, and the realisations that came with Wade... Knowing the price, and that they couldn't afford to _do_ this to one another.

Nathan picks up the phone and hesitates. He types in a name one-handed on Dwight's computer, pulls up the contact number, and dials it. 

"Anna Benedict," says the voice on the other end.

"Dr. Benedict... It's Detective Wuornos. Can you come down to the station? I'm working from the Chief's office, and... I thought I might be able to use your skills."

There's a surprised little pause. He's explicitly refused her skills a few times before. Nathan had been willing to speak to a psychiatrist -- had in fact briefly consulted over Skype with an out-of-town doctor who was a personal friend of his neurologist -- but had _not_ been willing to deal with someone who was a part of the police department, part of the infrastructure of Haven, and likely even part of the Guard, where everyone already had too much on him. He thinks they are a bit beyond those objections now. 

"Of course," she says, pulling herself together. "I'll be right over."

Nathan sags in his chair and thinks that he'll live to regret this. 

***


	2. The Lost Week

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nathan tries, using outside help, to determine the exact sequence of events that led to Duke killing him in the cave.

**2\. The Lost Week**

" _Use me_ ," Nathan had gasped to Duke, amid the spiral down from bad to worse. On some level, he knew when he said it how this was going to end. For a period of weeks, with Duke, he'd been allowed to think his existence would be something other than disposable, a tool employed in the service of fixing past wrongs, but he could have guessed that, too, had its end. What little of happiness he'd had, he'd stolen. He didn't deserve it.

"Do you really feel like that?" a female voice asks, piercing the darkness. He opens his eyes to see Anna Benedict standing in front of his -- _Dwight's_ desk. If she knocked on the door, he didn't hear it. Probably she saw him sitting zoned out through the internal windows. Saw, or… sensed. She raises her eyebrows and ducks her chin and he knows what they say about her is true. She can follow every thought that crosses his mind. 

She's wearing a mild, noncommittal expression and Nathan doesn't trust her, but he has the feeling worse people have been inside his head, and after everything that has happened, there can't be any secrets left that _matter_ any more.

Since she can find the answer for herself, he ignores the question. "Thank you for coming. I need your help to map out the last... thirteen days. I have incident reports, police records. My own notes... illegible as half of those are for that time. But it should help." Papers cover every available surface in the room. He hasn't _just_ been spacing out since he called her. He pulled the files for everything he was involved with since William strolled into his office on Lexie's arm. Dwight is going to flip. "I need to know how we got to here."

A crease deepens between her eyebrows. Anna Benedict is small and blonde, and her whole appearance and attitude is a contrast to the confident and forthright Claire until you realise the initially demure manner is just another ploy to lower people's defences. She clearly thinks Nathan's lost it. "You know you were _there_ , Nathan."

In the circumstances, her familiarity doesn't feel odd. This might be the strangest conversation he's had in a while. 

"I--" The phone starts to ring on Dwight's desk. Nathan tries to ignore it. Pinches his nose and shuts his eyes. Then he goes and pulls the cord out of the wall. "I was clinically _dead_. Possibility of brain damage. Oxygen starvation. Memory loss. The day before yesterday is definitely hazy. But is that _all_? I need to find out for sure. You--" He realises he's wielding the cord he's just pulled at her, and drops his arm to his side. "You help me. That's what you do."

"Technically," she says, "I help the Troubled."

She is almost certainly Guard, and one of the few with brain enough not to barcode themselves with it. But she doesn't move to leave, so he decides to ignore that as just a mean barb.

"I need to retrace the steps that led to my death." He gulps for air that's suddenly lacking, and has to remind himself that he definitely took the anti-inflammation pills not an hour ago.

"How dramatic. So, do you want my _professional_ help, or is it other, more 'specialised' skills you might be aware of? You have every right to the former, though you've never heeded any suggestions to book a session with me before. I'd call it presumptuous to request the latter."

"I think it was a murder, and I'm not talking about _Duke_. I need to..." He gestures frustratedly. "To unravel this any way I can. Any way _you_ can."

As he goes to the first of the piles he's laid out, he hears other papers rustle in time with the pages in his hands, and by the time he turns around she's seated, legs crossed, in the guest chair. A large format notebook rests upon her knee. She gives him a slow nod. "Please sit down," she tells him, professionalism taking over from her former rancour. "You were badly injured, it's been less than forty-eight hours... It's irritating when patients pass out mid-session."

"I don't want to be a patient," Nathan objects. "I just need to know." He takes the paperwork over to the chief's desk and sits down. He does wonder if Benedict would be humouring him if he wasn't armed with the appearance of authority. "I'm hoping, specifically, that you can spot any anomalies. Figure out if my memory isn't working right, or my mind wasn't."

He's aware that he doesn't sound particularly sane right now, and she is not the ideal person to be displaying any break in sanity to. The papers feel sharp edged in his hands as he rearranges them on the desk top. 

"I could read people's thoughts when I was six," she volunteers carefully. "It left me mute for a year, but imbued an urge to understand the human brain that changed my childhood reading to Jung and Freud and psychology textbooks. By the time the Troubles came back, I had spent my entire life preparing for this. In a very real way, you could say I let my Trouble define me. Don't think that gives you a free pass, but… You don't need to be afraid of me. For any of the reasons you're thinking." She hikes her chair closer and picks up and turns a few of the papers on Dwight's desk, scanning the contents. 

Nathan rattles impatiently in Dwight's seat. "Alright."

"If we're comfortable..."

Nathan thinks that comfortable is something he'll never be again. Feeling nothing wasn't comfort, exactly, but feeling everything is too much, and the constant, unremitting assault of it while trying to merely sit still is one of the things that could wear him into quiet madness by itself.

"Mr Wuornos, please," Benedict rubs her head with her fingers as though it aches. "I need you to calm down if we're going to get any usable information. But let's start with talking and see if that helps. Tell me about last Wednesday, since that seems to be the earliest report we have here. I'll try to ride along."

***

Lexie brought William to the station mid-morning. She'd been meant to be in at nine, but that wasn't exactly unusual. She hadn't the same work ethic or sense of responsibility Audrey did, although Nathan was learning he could trust her every bit as much in a crisis. Today, unusually, there was a lightness in her steps that hadn't been there since... since it had been Audrey who animated her same frame, way back almost a year ago when she'd first come to Haven.

"This is William," she told them, stepping aside to point two ring-bedecked hands at the man walking in behind her, her face open and excited. "He's the guy who helped me get out of the Barn."

Nathan's hatred of William was an instant, animal force. His freakish cheer and wide grin, his blue eyes which were not exactly like Nathan's but not so far removed, and there was something about the guy which Nathan instantly distrusted.

"What happened then?" Anna Benedict asks, intruding into Nathan's memory.

"There were a lot of questions. The guy came out of a supernatural Barn. Could've been like Howard, not really human -- Howard disintegrated like the Barn did when I shot him, like something from a science fiction movie. Or he could've been like Lexie, immune to the Troubles."

"And?" It's just possible to detect her undercurrent of sourness at the subject of Agent Howard and the destroyed Barn.

"I could feel him. He was like Audrey... like Lexie. But he claimed not to remember why he'd been in the Barn. Claimed not to remember anything at all..."

"...I think it's the easiest excuse invented," Nathan said, scowling at Dwight and Duke, in Dwight's office, as the past rolled out in Technicolor around him again. "Lose his memory and he doesn't have to tell us anything."

In this picture, far clearer than he remembered it before, constructed with the clarity of Benedict's more objective gaze, they are both rolling their eyes a little bit. It went unnoticed by him at the time. Nathan distrusted William, and it's obvious in retrospect that his reasons for that were entrenched in jealousy because Lexie was so clearly into him. Dwight and Duke weren't hanging on his every word and key observations about William the Sleaze, they were passing each other knowing looks. Dwight's contained a trace of sympathy -- Duke's, on closer examination, contained well hidden pain.

"Shit."

"He's your beau," Benedict says. Her voice echoes strangely as it intrudes upon the scene, the wrong shape and sound for the memory. Nathan is half aware of the _real_ world, of the present and of careful fingers touching his wrist like an anchor as he wavers in the disorienting double vision of talking to her simultaneous to revisitng this. He feels the hard seat under his ass and knows he's sitting at Dwight's desk. "Shouldn't it be obvious he's not going to take it well when you pull the possessive act over other women?"

"It's not _women_ , it's Aud-- Lexie. It's _complicated_ \--" There's a certain gratuitous humour in the way she dumps him back in the memory and leaves him to squirm, watching himself.

Fast-forward a half hour and they were back with William in the main room of the police station, talking about two guys who were targeting the Troubled. Making Troubles worse, mutating them into something else. Jordan arrived and they discussed how best to get the information out via the Guard and make sure the Troubled knew to watch their backs, made plans for handling any further Troubles that went viral like the dreams.

"I think I know those guys you're looking for," William said. "The short one with curly hair and glasses, and the really big one. They grabbed me when I first escaped from the Barn, but I got away from them. That's why it... took me so long to find you." He said that last part to just Lexie, tweaking her bare arm with the back of his hand and giving her a smarmy, smitten grin. "I guess."

In the memory, slowed down and far more dispassionate than living the moment, Nathan hears the mistake, the pause and the tacked-on recovery that could have exposed him as dishonest so much earlier if only someone had caught it.

...Someone other than Nathan, who it's clear is locked in jealous peevishness, hurting Duke, amusing William, disgusting Jordan and embarrassing Dwight.

"Seeing yourself without the filter isn't comfortable," Benedict puts in, causing him further weird psychic vertigo. "Take note and learn something, Wuornos."

Nathan growls, "William was a dick. That much was obvious from the start. He--"

"You aren't mysteriously better at reading people -- or reading non-human assholes -- than anyone else. This is jealousy and coincidence."

Their review of Wednesday generally sucks for the tatters of Nathan's self-esteem. As the re-lived day draws to an end, they head into more intimate territory. Benedict's commentary begins at, "I've seen it all before... Maybe not two guys, but whatever," but changes fast to, "I hope we're watching this because something important happens and not just to get your jollies."

Nathan isn't getting anything jolly from re-living it with a hostile audience. He doesn't _feel_ this Duke's weight on him and inside him, but he feels heat in his face and knows he's blushing furiously, elsewhere. "It's the last time we were completely normal."

" _This_ is normal?"

"Yes! ...More or less." It's true that Duke may have been indulging Nathan on this evening more than others, since they dialled things back. In retrospect, Duke may have been feeling insecure enough to want to prove something to Nathan, after watching the performance between him and Lexie and William, that day. "But something _happened_ after this, and I don't know _when_." He realises he can't do this. She's a young woman and he's... fucked up, and _this_ is going to be fucked up, and they've barely even started. If she witnesses it through his skin then it won't _hurt_ , but it's still nothing she deserves to witness.

" _Nathan_ ," she berates, receiving the thought and intent before he can speak. In the world of reality, a million miles away, she folds both her hands over his on top of the papers in the middle of the desk between them. "I am not _running away_. Do not pull that overprotective bullshit on me. I can do things to the inside of your head you can't imagine. Psychiatry is sex. Deal with it."

"It's going to get bad before the end. Especially toward the end," Nathan rasps. They've come out of the memories far enough that he can hear his real voice saying the words, scarred and damaged by Duke's hands. It's still clear and crisp inside his head.

"Stay there." He feels her hands leave his. Before yesterday, he wouldn't have known, sight-unseen. He sits in the grip of whatever trance she's imposed on him and hears her shuffle papers. The shuffling comes closer again. Her touch returns to his hands. "Maybe we should try Thursday..."

***

It started the day after William's appearance, with one of the nastiest Troubles they'd encountered. Daisy Morello's harmless ability to create fairies out of children's imaginations, little delicate-winged fantasies that flitted around, sparkled and vanished, instead started bringing to life a nightmare parade of monsters and maniacs from popular culture.

Zombies and demons, Freddie Kruegar and Jason... the dementors were probably the worst _,_ though Duke had to be funny and claim Jar Jar Binks, and that Stephen King clown was no joke, either. They had to get near to Daisy to stop it, and they couldn't get to Daisy without fighting their way through the horrors surrounding her. As they'd done with the killer golems of Martin Skovann, Duke and Nathan had no choice but to combine Nathan's blood and Duke's Trouble. It wasn't as though repeated nicks and cuts damaged Nathan's ability to fight.

There'd been an offended cast to William's startled expression, watching them fight, that Nathan hadn't understood until later.

He was pretty sure that was the night Lexie and William started sleeping together.

After all the blood spilled during the day, Nathan and Duke returned to the _Cape Rouge_ worn out and jumping at shadows. Nathan was never going to be able to watch _Nightmare on Elm Street_ again, and they'd both definitely sworn off _Harry Potter._ The tension was weird and they _probably_ should have watched a movie -- say 'My Little Pony' -- and gone to bed, instead of trying to fuck at all.

Nathan didn't even realise what Duke had done until it was over. When they disengaged and Duke averted his head, Nathan followed him around and saw the blood on his shirt collar.

"What happened? Did I elbow you?" He was dismayed by the idea he'd nailed Duke in the nose, as banged up as they both already were.

Duke shook his head, eyes squeezed shut, and dashed from the room. While the sound of running water trickled from the bathroom to Nathan's ears, he went to the mirror and discovered the bite mark on his shoulder.

Duke returned shamefaced, without his shirt. "I got overexcited and -- Jesus, I can't believe I... Didn't you notice me being rougher? You could've yelled me off or something."

But the rough sex had been exactly what Nathan needed after the day he'd had, and at the time all he'd thought was how they'd been unusually attuned. They'd tried and mostly managed to back off from such destructive patterns, of late, but the yearning was full-force in him again. 

Things were weird the day after, but it was a predictable weird. William was around again, looking at Nathan with a fixity like he was trying to freak him out. William with his hands all over Lexie, and her all over him. She straddled him on a chair in Nathan's office. They were like teenagers, and William was making himself a Haven PD auxiliary, when he definitely didn't belong there.

"Like you're one to talk," Lexie retorted, when he lost his temper and said too much. "You're always here with _Duke_. Does this place look like a bar to you? William's the same as me. He understands the Troubles. You're the one who's redundant, you _and_ Duke. Screw you, Nathan."

It had not been a good day at the office. Nathan went home to Duke, and they didn't go to the _Rouge_ , but went back to Nathan's house, where they tried to watch sports on the big TV and didn't have sex. Duke claimed he was too sore now all the aches from the fighting the day before had stiffened.

In retrospect, Nathan understands that Duke was afraid. In truth, it wasn't unclear back then. It just got buried, lost among so much else.

Friday started with the pterodactyl attacks, or rather for Nathan, it started with William ringing his cellphone at 5AM to cheerfully alert him of the pterodactyl attacks with the statement, "Holy flying death, Batman." Dwight apologised later, swearing the guy had seemed perfectly level and helpful when he'd made the offer to call Nathan and Duke in.

William had been around at five in the morning to catch the start of the pterodactyl incident because he and Lexie hadn't gone to bed yet.

There followed more of Nathan's blood, more of Duke's sweat and bruises. They didn't know where the dinosaurs came from, and to date they _still_ don't know, but it's possible that whoever's Trouble it was found their own way to get a grip on it. At the time, the dinosaurs just meant more fighting -- another problem with no other solution but battling through.

When Duke curled against him later in bed, breathing him in, only belatedly did Nathan realise he was burying his nose into the bloody bandaging, sniffing like even the scent enticed him. "God, get me off you," Duke entreated as Nathan's sharp intake of breath made him check himself. Nathan didn't have to shove him away, he scooted off of his own accord.

They slept separately. Nathan went home.

William made jokes about ructions between them when they arrived separately, each in their own truck, the next day.

Saturday was... more dinosaurs, more blood, and a contingent of the Glendower women turned up at the police station, concerned that the Glendower men had disappeared from their regular swimming grounds.

Dwight talked to the Glendowers. Nathan and Duke got to go dinosaur hunting with William and Lexie again. It was like some really annoying double dating arrangement, except with a lot more firepower.

The next day threw at them a minor but deadly Trouble so unstoppable between its affected family members that Duke had no option but to kill. He sobbed into Nathan's shoulder that night and begged for his blood. The cuts were finally starting to get a chance to heal, but wouldn't be difficult to re-open. Nathan said, "No," while secretly wanting the rush of Duke, empowered, pounding him into the mattress. "You know it won't help. It will only make things harder, when it happens next time."

"I'll fuck you hard," Duke promised _._ Psychosomatic chills washed over Nathan. It was deeply unsettling how Duke's fingers clung onto him and his eyes burned with need. He looked like Wade had, insane and filled with the addictive thrill of butchery when he'd had Nathan chained up in the shower. Duke had used his Trouble much, much more than Wade ever had by now.

With a groan, Duke abruptly turned over, showing Nathan his back. He stayed that way, and eventually fell asleep. Nathan lay in bed most of the night with his eyes open. He couldn't deal with this.

Since he came back to Haven, being with Duke had been all that held him together. If Duke needed blood, maybe next time it would be easiest to give it to him. They'd be able to make love again, and everything would be all right.

By the morning, sanity had reasserted itself. He knew he needed to press for caution next time anyone suggested using Duke to end a Trouble or to fight something monstrous. He absolutely could not offer up his blood to Duke _recreationally_. Nathan felt so thinly stretched out he could have been turning transparent, and it wouldn't have surprised him, except he was Troubled already.

On Monday morning, the first Glendower leavings washed up on a beach to the west of town. Nathan and Lexie were woken up with the dawn to greet it, leaving both their partners behind at boat and bar.

"How's Duke?" Lexie asked, over the picked-clean top half of a human torso. The lower half still had enough meat on it to be recognisable as a very recent corpse. The problem appeared to have been getting the unfortunate male victim out of his jeans, heavy denim tight and clinging in the water.

It was obvious, in Lexie's amenability and dark-smudged eyes yet distinctly cheerful manner, that while Nathan was getting no sex lately, she was getting plenty. Nathan failed to take the offered olive branch in good spirits. "He's still down from the other day."

Later that day, they had their first sight of what the Glendower men had become. In shock at the pale, sagging white-grey flesh, the teeth, the animal ferocity in once-human eyes, they forgot that it reverted to a person, and forgot, too, that Duke needed to kill it in order for it to be a sacrifice to stop the rest of the horror. Lexie's and Nathan's bullets were too keen, at the cost of at least three more people and half a dozen family pets since. No wonder William grinned from ear to ear as he said, "Wow, you guys bagged a sea monster!"

Lexie explained, putting two and two together. Mathematics mostly based upon the fact the 'sea monster' was wearing a human wetsuit. Duke hung in the background, looking sick and relieved but also a bit like he'd been cheated of his fix.

Nathan put an arm around his shoulders and led him firmly away.

The next day, they woke up and things were different. The floodgates opened. They both realised how much they'd been denying each other. They fucked like it had been a year and not four days. Nathan gasped out those damned words, " _Use me_ ," and they groped and scratched one another like animals. Nathan drew blood to make Duke draw it in retaliation, wanting the buzz from the punishment only Duke could give, powered up by his curse.

 _Here. Something's different,_ says a voice in Nathan's head, distinct from the memories, though he barely recognises or registers it in the moment. He's lost, caught up in violent sex and silver eyes, the _thunk_ as he's slung back against the mattress, Duke hissing insults at him for denying him so long.

In their bed, seven days ago, despite all their knowledge, caution and experience -- despite _Wade_ \-- they started to tear at each other without inhibition, as though there was anything to be gained from it other than mutual destruction.

It got lost because that was the day, a week into the escalation of all their problems, when they discovered it had been William behind everything all along.

Lexie protested, denied, cried impossibility and claimed to have been with him for at least two occasions when people had been attacked and their Troubles activated, accelerated, mutated. But William could do things, and it had become obvious enough to the rest of them that he didn't need to be there in person to cause those things to happen.

William fled. Lexie got angry, got drunk, got into a fight with Dwight that was scarily brutal. Duke and Nathan lost themselves in stolen moments of illicit thrill. A tack slid covertly into Nathan's jaw as they stood by the notice board in his office, and Duke's silver eyes turned in toward the wall for the rough kiss that followed. A fingernail scraped across a healing scab beneath Nathan's shirt while they leaned against the side of the Bronco, in full public view in the street. Duke closed his eyes to hide them.

Bruised and angry already from Lexie, Dwight lost his temper with them both for being so absorbed in each other while their friend's world fell apart. He failed to see the blood, the need, the obsession. Couldn't see the doom hanging over them yet.

That night was no-holds-barred, no sanity permitted into proceedings, all the things they'd been too cautious to do, testing Duke's stamina while under the influence. It didn't bother Nathan to bleed. He could do it all day. The rewards were more than worth it.

The next day, everyone in the Holdsworth family started to eat themselves, starting from the extremities inward. Duke had to kill Amelia Holdsworth to stop it.

"The buzz from killing is stronger," Duke confided, nuzzling Nathan's neck and a cut, supposedly from shaving, that had actually just been planning ahead for later. "Better." He smeared lines of Nathan's blood down his fingers, and they both watched it sink in. "I hate the idea of killing people feeling so good."

"Well, you won't get to feel _this_ every night in your bed if you kill me," Nathan responded. "That _would_ be a one-time high." He mostly felt annoyed because wizened old Amelia Holdsworth just outdid him in Duke's eyes. He didn't feel sickened that Duke had just killed an old woman whose last few hours had been utterly horrific, and that the rest of her family, no longer afflicted but already varyingly mutilated, were still left to suffer the consequences because they had not made the decision to kill _faster_.

Troubles came thick and fast. Nathan spent the night getting fucked so hard Dwight noticed him limping the next day -- unable to feel, but _still_ limping -- and asked if he was all right. Nathan gave back unfriendly answers for his interest, not willing to hear any suggestion he was doing wrong. Duke _needed_ him, Haven needed him. They needed his blood and Duke's Trouble to keep the rest of the Troubles at bay.

Especially if Lexie was drinking herself into a coma in the apartment above the _Gull_ and refusing to report in.

William laughed at them when they tracked him down. Bloody from a blow of Duke's curse-enhanced fist, he still turned around and laughed, spitting and wiping his nose off on the back of his hand. "Well, if it isn't the Cheeky Boys," he said. "How's that arrangement going, huh? Duke? Nate? _Nate?_ Looking pale there. Perhaps you need a top-up on the old O-negative."

He escaped into the woods. Duke, breathing harshly as they slowed down from his chase, asked, "What did he mean? I'm not hurting you. It's only scratches. I can _barely_ get enough to make the buzz last from those."

Later, Nathan sliced deeper lines into his chest to prove himself.

Dwight figured it out. Or it might've been Jordan who figured it out and told Dwight, who responded by trying to take them off the case -- off any cases going. But Troubles were relentless, and in the end, no-one had a choice.

Lexie disappeared. They'd coaxed her out of the apartment only a few times since William's betrayal. Now, it really was all down to them. Through Anna Benedict's crystal-sharp re-imagining of Nathan's memories, their last days rolled out a shameful picture. Time lost meaning. Events lost coherence. Everything became sex and blood and blunt force. Things started to become... not so good, even for Nathan in that state of mind, because Duke's descent was faster, with more pulling him down.

Until Duke couldn't hold off anymore, tossed Nathan aside and charged out in the middle of the night to hunt Glendowers, because he needed the buzz of the kill that Nathan couldn't provide him... Or at least, could only provide once.

And Nathan, ridiculously, chose to follow.

***

He comes out of the memory gasping and shivering anew from the transition into sensation from nothing. Anna Benedict grips his hands and urges him toward calm. There are means she is employing that don't use her hands or her voice, but she is trembling, too, eyes wide and shocked. The last encounter was brutal. He can feel her shivers through her hands.

Nathan doesn't know why he went after Duke; whether it was the urge to prevent him killing someone else or jealous rage that Duke could look elsewhere for his needs. No clear thinking was being done at that point.

But what is clear is that Duke went out that night looking for a Troubled person to kill, and if it hadn't been Nathan, it might have been a Glendower, but it also might have been someone else. Someone whose Trouble was not dangerous, who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"You don't come back from that," Nathan says, staring Benedict in the eye. Both their shaking is starting to calm down. "You don't just _come back_." Duke is sane now. It can't have been the shock of killing Nathan that snapped him out of it: this isn't a fairy tale. "It can't just have been the blood. He'd still be raving."

They stare at each other. Benedict knows as much now as he does. She doesn't say anything, but she doesn't refute it.

"I need to go back," Nathan says, tightening his hands on her hands. The grip is sweaty and full of small tremors, he has no idea whose. Her reluctance tells in the way she takes her hands back from him to fold across her chest. "There's something else there. In those last moments. Something I'm missing. We _changed_..."

Nathan is also much saner now than he was. He is as sure as he can be that you don't lose yourself that hard only to spring back like sanity operates on a bungee cord. He _knows_. He's been there before... to a lesser degree.

"I need to see it again," he tells Benedict, and has the grace, this time, to put a trace of request in there, of apology. This is not just a trauma for him. Even if that last round with Duke had not been so close to something else, she just felt him _die._

"Are you kidding? Every Troubled person in Haven has daydreams about that." The tremble in her voice gives the lie to the bravado.

Nathan still thinks that putting her through this is not one of his shining hours, but he's having so few of those anyway lately. After laying it all out, it's a wonder Dwight and the others welcomed him back as readily as they did. It's _no_ wonder they were ready to drag him out of a hospital bed.

"I suppose the martyr complex is unremarkable in the circumstances," Benedict comments, not too shaken to resist getting one last dig in.

"I need to _know_." Nathan holds his hands out for hers.

***

Duke was gone. Nathan hadn't been enough for him; not to contain him, nor control him. He'd gone to find the rush of the kill.

Nathan found Duke's truck parked at the top of the beach. The tide was out, breakers a long way off down the sand. He looked around in the fading light for a spot where Duke could have walked and saw distant rocks.

He found Duke kicking the water, agitatedly yelling at the sea. Speckles of rain had begun to fall, and by that time, night was settling over them in a grey shroud.

Seeing him there, Duke breathed in sharply. "Damn it, Nathan, I'm not safe to be around. I _told_ you that. Why don't you ever _listen_?"

"Well, now. That depends on what you want in a partner, doesn't it?" Nathan was too preoccupied to register Duke's shakes, even though he knew every danger sign there. "Come home, Duke."

"I'll kill you." Stubborn, driven. "I need to find a Glendower. At least that's something I can excuse. Something _useful._ Dwight wants it done, no matter what he says."

There was a tank full of Glendowers at the aquarium, but they'd be watched by the Guard, and whoever was there might be too tempting a Troubled morsel for Duke in his current state.

"You're not going to kill _me_ ," Nathan said. "Better me than anyone else. You can't stay out here all night if a Glendower doesn't come." Half the people he would see first thing in the morning were Troubled. But if Duke was home, and rested, and at least _trying_ to get this out of his system... "You can lock yourself in the store room and meditate again. It worked before. Duke, come on." He took a step forward and Duke backed away from him, almost a desperate lunge. Nathan darted to catch him, fingers curling in the material of his knit pullover.

Duke returned the gesture, grabbing him so hard he couldn't step out of the hold. "Nathan, you do _not_ want to do this _,_ okay? Back off." But Duke... wasn't letting go.

Nathan forged ahead with what had always worked. He wasn't afraid of rough sex. He wasn't afraid of Duke killing him, even if it would do nothing to take away the Troubles, even if he knew that Duke wouldn't survive killing Nathan. At the time, it didn't feel like he was embracing destruction. He closed his mouth over Duke's and kissed him.

Duke shoved him backwards hard. Then they were on the ground. Gravel crunched beneath Nathan, and Duke shifted and squirmed, pulling his clothes to get at broken skin. The cloth clung, damp with the drizzle and the spray, resisting Duke until it tore, revealing lines of old cuts. Nathan healed fast, but there were plenty of marks still fresh enough to break open.

Duke drew out his father's knife. Even in the replay, Nathan couldn't remember when in the past weeks Duke had stopped trying to ignore its existence and begun to carry it, but he knew that Duke had. The blade slashed down, creating a new line of red.

"Is it better when it's fresh?" Nathan asked, curiously detached.

"It's better with the act of cutting it free." Duke held up the knife, then pressed the blade to his own cheek. He didn't cut himself. The blood smeared off the blade onto his face and sank in. His eyes silvered and he sighed.

"Let's go home," Nathan said. It was cold and wet, and he couldn't feel that but Duke could. Besides, the lube was at home, the bed was at home. There was a lot more they could do on the _Rouge_ than out here.

Duke shook his head. "Let's stay here." He turned the knife to smear the reverse of the blade and used the increased strength to stop Nathan as he tried to get up, catching both wrists and pulling them over to one side, pinning them up by his shoulder. Duke leaned all his weight forward to keep them there when the blood-rush wore down.

"Duke!" Nathan shouted at him, starting to get angry.

Duke reached down with the knife and popped the button from Nathan's jeans with the tip. Then he leaned in and licked his tongue across the newest cut on Nathan's chest, end to end. His eyes silvered again.

Someone built like Dwight might've been able to hold Nathan down that way indefinitely, but Duke didn't have enough mass on him, and this time, the moment the silver in Duke's eyes cleared, Nathan made a focused effort to wrench loose.

A fist rebounded off the side of his head with a dull _smack._ The angle wasn't good, and Duke was only able to employ limited force, but surprise caused Nathan to freeze.

"Sorry," Duke panted. There was something in his strained face that was somehow not violent or angry but pathetic, more lost-child than brutal aggressor. "You _followed_ me. I need you really badly, Nathan. Please..." His hands made scuffling noises, out of sight lower down their bodies. The scuffles were followed by the heavier sounds of Nathan's jeans being dragged down. 

This was a stupid place to have sex. Nathan's head was wedged by rock on either side. The rocks were _sharp_ , Haven's seas were filled with monsters. The tide wouldn't be in until almost dawn, but when it came in, it was unpredictable. Nathan started to roll over. "When we get _home_." 

Duke caught him by the wrist and shoulder and put him back with supernatural strength. A hand pressed to his bleeding chest, immobilizing the top half of his body, while Duke's other hand reached down again to pull at his jeans. 

"Duke!" Nathan roared as soon as he gathered the breath. "We need to get back! You need help. _We_ need help!"

"You seem pretty hard for 'Don't', Nate." Duke slid a hand between his legs, where Nathan had no real idea what was going on. The subtle cues he normally relied on in sexual arousal were lost amid all this.

"Duke, get off!" This _wasn't_ happening. They'd talked about this. They'd talked about _too far_. But a lot of what they'd _talked about_ had been thrown out in the last week or more.

Duke cursed as he skinned his wrist on a protruding rock in their struggle. He touched Nathan's blood again and used the strength to lift him by the underarms. Hampered by his half-mast jeans, Nathan tried to use his feet to stumble along with Duke's dragging, to reduce the physical wear of being hauled about like a sack. He craned his head and saw their destination was a circle of soft, yellow sand that had collected in the mouth of a cave. Duke dropped him onto the sand with a breathless, "Okay, so I take your point about the rocks. This is better."

Nathan rolled over, swearing, but Duke dropped on top of him before he could get purchase to rise in the soft sand. It didn't hurt, but it knocked the breath from him. One of Duke's arms curled around his chest beneath their pressed bodies, finding the cuts again, while the other hauled on his hips.

"I'm always... always holding back with you," Duke whispered next to his ear. "Please, Nate. Just let me. Just once."

Holding _back?_

Fury washed through Nathan and he snarled, lowering his chin over Duke's pinning arm, to pin it in return. His head wasn't screwed on right, but those words brought all his fears and anger into relief. A challenge he couldn't refuse: that he wasn't good enough for Duke, wasn't strong enough, resilient enough, couldn't _take it._ In that moment, at least, it seemed to make sense, transforming the situation from something else into a _dare_. He clamped his arm over Duke's, pushed back with his hips... hadn't a clue if Duke was already inside him. "You... _don't…_ hold back. I'm built to take it! I keep _telling you_. Don't hold back."

Another Duke would have called bullshit on him; " _Just because you can't feel it, Nate..._ ", the old familiar lecture. But this Duke was way beyond that. The forward slap of his hips formed his reply, and he was rough enough that even Nathan knew each and every thrust was happening. "God, Nate. _Nate..."_ Duke slashed the knife again, opening up a fresh blood source somewhere.

Even at the time, immune to pain, tangled up in inappropriate arousal, and never in his right mind to begin with, Nathan perceived that it went badly after that. His body was not going to be okay afterward.

It began to seep in to him that Duke was genuinely out of control and maybe wasn't coming back. Trying to reassert some measure of sense and restraint in a brown eyed moment got his head slapped sharply... explanation for one mystery laceration he'd woken up with. When he tried to snag Duke's eyes after that he saw only silver, not the real warm, brown gaze he knew.

The world disappeared into the whims of Duke's madness and need.

Nathan wondered if his own arousal would continue to sing even as Duke killed him. The skin of his chest was slick with blood, and there were bite marks on his shoulders... Duke's skin was clean except for damp-stuck sand, absorbing all else that clung to him.

Nathan remembered how Wade, before, had not been interested in _Nathan,_ only his blood. He was more than that to Duke.

It was going to help this time.

The thing inside him that embraced all this was fast becoming drowned out by the will to survive that had _survived_ Wade, that wanted to live and _keep_ _living_... Something Duke was a part of, though their possibilities of a future seemed to diminish with each twist of a limb and each new penetration as Nathan finally started to fight in earnest. Sand got in his eyes from being shoved face down, and the world blurred into watery streaks. He yelled, trying to bring Duke back to himself, Duke's name over and over... But Duke was oblivious to all but blood and sex. Nathan lost focus and breath as Duke grew impatient with him, knowing what would most _inconvenience_ even if it wouldn't _hurt_. Nathan choked useless curses. There was no gain in shouting for help... Even if there was anyone close, they'd only be faced by the Crocker Legacy if he brought them closer.

Duke pulled him over onto his back again some incalculable length of time later. "Duke, stop," Nathan grunted, as an elbow wove under his knee. He realised his hands were free and he hadn't even noticed, it had become so much beside the point. He clasped them around Duke's face and managed to jerk his head up and fix Duke's line of sight. " _Stop_."

He didn't expect it to work.

But Duke's eyes cleared suddenly. Nathan saw the madness dissipate... and saw the _horror_ of being sane again, Duke's realisation of _what the hell have I done?_ He tried hard to recapture enough of his own breath and reason to muster something to soothe and comfort the Duke that had _come back_.

Before he could, Duke, with the sanity in his eyes crystallizing into determination, put his hands to Nathan's throat, over Nathan's mouth. 

Bore down with his weight until the world _stopped_...

...Picked up...

...Resumed in a blaze of pain.

***

Nathan crashes off his chair with a cry. He shouldn't be startled by the pain... It's still the same pain, two days on, dulled and quieted by artificial means. But numbness is pervasive. He fell into the memory of his numbness, the habit of it.

"You're not there anymore," Anna Benedict's complexion has turned paper-white, but she negotiates chair and table legs to crawl in and touch his wrist. "You're here, in the chief's office. It's a safe place. Duke Crocker is at the _Grey Gull._ "

He's not afraid of Duke. It's just--

The control of his body that Duke took from him, exercised, maintained for hours. It didn't _hurt_ , but he became a puppet dangling at someone else's whim. He couldn't _fight_.

The shadow of that is still with him.

"Duke was sane when he killed me."

"He was." Anna's eyes are very hard.

"You don't understand..." After the things he'd been forced to do, driven by his curse... In Duke's mind, maybe... maybe he'd _had_ to ensure it could never happen again. So he took Nathan's Trouble away to save him. By every reasonable prediction, save for the most outrageous of luck, he ought to have killed him in the process of trying.

"It doesn't make it better. It was calculated. He knew what he was doing. You should be angry."

Nathan laughs quite a lot.

Oh, he is angry about that. But in the scheme of things, considering what they _did_ to each other, considering how they drove and distorted each other, is it _really_ the most important thing to fixate on? They are both _alive._ Sane, even... after a fashion. They shouldn't be.

They're saner now than they were for most of the last week, and _they shouldn't be._

Anna hisses, "What do you think happened, then? Was this another Trouble?"

 _Was_ it?

Nathan climbs back up onto the chair, leaning heavily on the table, and too reliant on Benedict's aid to get that far. He thought she didn't like him, but he supposes those feelings might be harder to hold onto after sharing _that_.

He leans his head into his hands, bracing elbows on the table, burying his face. "I need to see it again. The last part."

She says, "Fuck you." There's white around the edges of her eyes. "I am not diving back into that."

"Just the last part."

"...Just the part where you jump from absolute zero to a ten on the pain scale? The _fun_ part? No. Above and fucking beyond, Wuornos."

He sighs.

She's on the way to grab her bag and march out of there, from what Nathan can see of her through his fingers, when she stops. "You saw something." Hesitation in her voice. "What did you see?" She comes back to him. Her hands peel his away from his face, and she touches his forehead, slides her thumbs over his eyes, teasing them closed. She tells him, "It's your memory. There is no brain damage. You can remember. You don't need me to take you back there."

She may be right. His mind is... a _mess_ , a morass of pitfalls and traps, but it's not the impossible disorder that it was before she helped strip down and lay out the last two weeks.

"What did you _see?_ " she asks.

Nathan casts himself back. "I saw Duke..."

One moment a maniac with silvered eyes, twisted by addiction and base instinct. The next moment, _Duke_ again. Not making a whole lot of sense, perhaps. Doing stupid, stupid things that Nathan has yet to learn to accept. But still Duke. In between those moments...

"It was dark," Nathan murmurs. He can't be sure what he saw.

But he sees it now, replaying in his memory. A small, round blob of shadow, edges well-defined, too perfect in shape to be an artefact of his blurred, sandy vision or an illusion, detaching itself from Duke's larger shadow and... floating away.

Nathan hisses air out through his teeth.

Benedict waits on his explanation.

"William has... these black balls of crap. Little, smooth, black spheres, about so big." He makes a circle for her with his thumb and forefinger, forgetting she has seen them in his memories. "He uses them to make Troubles. I've seen him do it. I've seen him form a creature out of them, and those two henchmen of his..."

He takes a deep breath. That thing was inside Duke? Is that really what he's saying? Does that mean _he_ had one? Does he _still_ have one? No... no, he is saner now, since dying. But if William could do that _,_ William could make them do anything.

"I think he might use them for other things, too," Nathan rasps, and Benedict's face twists in disgust, catching the picture from his mind. "What do... what do you think?"

Because she's the expert on what minds do. On the sane and the insane. On what's real and what's outside influence. He didn't hesitate long and hard before letting her into his head for nothing.

"I think this fucker William needs to go down," she says, with a vehemence that states whatever claims she makes, she did not appreciate experiencing William's handiwork upon Nathan.

Confirmation is as terrifying as it is reassuring. They had William in their heads, but at least they didn't do this to themselves.

...Did they? It seems to him they were already on the edge of falling apart before William provided the extra push.

Yet they _didn't,_ and Nathan clings to that.

The door bursts open. It's Dwight, demanding to know why the hell Nathan's been ignoring his phone, what the hell he thinks he's been doing with the responsibilities Dwight entrusted to him, and -- what the _fuck_ has he done to his office? Nathan holds up his arms in admission of culpability, too dazed to even attempt explanation on the receiving end of the furious deluge. Benedict pulls Dwight aside to talk.

Whatever of his secrets she's spilling, Nathan's head is spinning too much for him to care.

It's all so fresh and immediate now. The memory-dulling effect of the influence they were under -- of trauma, of resuscitation, of whichever of the multiple options was actually behind his haziness of recollection before...

...It may have had its benefits.

***


	3. Three Days Grace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After everything that has happened, with William and Audrey temporarily removed from the equation, Nathan and Duke have a brief window to try and fix their relationship, while Dwight and Nathan and HPD try to fix Haven, and figure out where they _all_ go from here.

**3\. Three Days Grace**

The bitterest pill is that there's nothing he can do. William's sleeping. Audrey took him out. Nathan can't go to him and demand _why?_ Can't pound his fists into that smug face anyway, waking or sleeping, to get any kind of satisfaction.

Dwight makes him sit alone in an interview room for half an hour and drink two cups of vending machine soup and a coffee sugared to the point of being actively unpleasant to swallow, but it's not much of an addition of substance.

He takes his pills again, late. The soft tissue inflammation in his throat must be subsiding a little on its own; he didn't feel it as much, this time. The pain that lines his body is a reminder he can't escape from. He wishes he was numb again, free to ignore it and let it all pass him by.

Dwight comes in eventually, quietly, a soft _snick_ at the door. Nathan doesn't know what Anna Benedict said, but Dwight is walking on eggshells around him now. That doesn't exactly make Nathan feel any more together.

" _What_?" Nathan asks sharply, and decides that if Dwight tries to ask whether he's okay or play counsellor, he's going to punch him and damn the consequences. At least that way he can prove there's still life in him yet.

"You need to go see Gloria," Dwight says neutrally. "She came back earlier, saw you with the psychiatrist, and said she figured she better let things be, since it seemed the first bright idea you'd had in weeks. Her words. She doesn't know what you were _doing_."

His exasperation is not critical -- after all, if William can warp their thoughts, it was something they all needed to know.

"I'm sending you home," Dwight adds. It's almost four o'clock anyway, and by the time Nathan's seen Gloria it won't be knocking a lot off the day. "Anna wants to put a word in for you with the Guard," and there's a faint widening of his eyes at the surprise of that decision, "so it might not actually have been the worst idea you ever had." 

But it has put him out of the action again. It's obvious even to Nathan that he's useless right now.

"You _don't_ have to go home to Duke." Dwight says that in an angry burst. Nathan just looks at him. "I can get someone else to tell him what you've found out. It doesn't have to be you." Dwight's flattening tone indicates him giving up even while his lips are still moving.

"It's not Duke's fault." Nathan pushes the plastic cups and the empty pill cases into the centre of the table and stands up. He has to control himself to do it -- fast or aggressive movement will have him on his ass. "He was trying to help." It's possible to make a case that _Nathan_ was the one who did this to _him_ ; too ready to embrace his own descent, too willing to let Duke overstep the bounds of reason. _He_ is the one who courts destruction. Duke just wants to run his bar, crack jokes, hang with Nathan and _be normal._

Duke needs him there right now, above all else, to prove that Duke didn't break him.

Nathan shuts his eyes and breathes. Last night was fine. This morning... had its hiccups. But it was awkward and angry, where it fell down, not scary, except for that one wakening freak-out in the night.

He can tell that Dwight is wondering about the value of sending him home at all if it means he goes back to the _Cape Rouge_. Dwight, from his pondering expression, may well be thinking about keeping him there: locking him up, if he has to, to stop him going back to Duke.

"I'm all right," Nathan says cagily, with the sudden urge to get out fast. He spent a night pinned at mad!Duke's mercy. Before that, his life has been ruled by the dictates of the Guard. Being locked up for his own good at this point, he suddenly thinks, will be the final straw that sends him completely over the edge. "I'll go see Gloria."

Dwight steps back and opens the door for him. "I'll get Stan to take you to the morgue in a patrol car, and wait to take you home after that." He sighs slightly on the word _home_.

Nathan _could_ go home, he realises. He could go back to his own place, and ask Duke to join him there. There's no food, but he could order a take-out meal. The worst of the last two weeks took place on the _Rouge_. It isn't a bad idea, for neutral territory. "All right." Stan, he's sure, will report back everything he does, and Dwight may even send someone to do a few drive-bys through the course of the evening.

Dwight is so careful with him on the way out of the station that Nathan really does start to wonder what Dr Benedict said. At least Stan just cheerfully talks sports results to him on the way to the morgue. Nathan missed two weeks of those, so he's interested and it's a tiny chink of normality to cling to.

Stan stays in the car, sketching an encouraging wave, and Nathan painfully makes his way once again up the long line of steps.

William awaits him in the morgue. So does Audrey, but she's... back in the shadows, at this point, not so prominent as her evil, male mirror. Nathan can't help but think first about William. About wanting to curl his hands around the throat of William, and squeeze hard until all life leaves it.

He can't do that.

"Hey, there, Nathan." Gloria fusses over him, too nice by far. She sits him down and feels all around his throat with her bony hands. Hands on his neck make Nathan want to throw up. It wasn't like this when she examined him yesterday. If he had left the experience coated by that haze, he wouldn't have learned anything, he reminds himself. They'd still think they did this to themselves. Knowing is _worth more._

His breathing concerned Gloria the most before, but she seems to come away satisfied. She checks his pulse, his eyes, his reflexes, and hrms inconclusively. She checks and re-straps his ribs.

Most of Nathan's attention remains on the sleeping figure on the gurney at the back of the room.

"Where's Audrey?" he eventually asks, dry-mouthed, as Gloria finishes.

She flaps a bit, uncharacteristically embarrassed. "I put her in the store cupboard. They were giving me the creeps, side by side. If I had the resources I'd put her the other side of town. You try walking in when they're both breathing in sync and then they twitch in their sleep and stop still at the exact same time."

Ice runs down Nathan's spine. " _Can't_ we move her across town? Or... at least put William in a cell..." Which will mean Nathan has access to him, and is perhaps not a good idea considering how murderous fantasies cry from the back of his mind for attention.

"I'm trying to run tests on William," Gloria says caustically. "Audrey might not appreciate that too much. They both also need regular 24 hour supervision while they're under. Find me anyone else medically qualified to do it."

"Lucassi..." Was leaving, but Nathan isn't sure he's gone yet. "His problem is with corpses."

"Hunh," Gloria admits. "You look into that, then. I'll be right here, babysitting."

"You're sleeping here?" Nathan asks.

"No shortage of beds. Though the climb up and down gives grief to my hip." She eyes him and grunts. "Don't worry about it tonight. Dwight told me you're off the clock. Go home, get some sleep yourself."

Nathan wonders if Anna Benedict has enough physical medical experience to do it, though he'd rather Lucassi. He might have trusted her with his brain but he'd rather not trust her with Audrey.

"I'm gonna fix you up with some more pills," Gloria declares. "Stay there. Don't touch anything."

As soon as she's off, rummaging, Nathan is up and standing over William. His hand moves over the sleeping man's throat. He thinks of Audrey and his hand just hovers there, trembling.

Nathan wonders if he could castrate him without hurting Audrey. It strikes him as _possible_ , and it also strikes him as fitting, after what William engineered.

In the end, he only curls his hand beneath the other man's chin, heavily enough that he hopes William can tell his neck is being held, down in the depths of his twisted dreams; can tell and know for one moment that his life is in Nathan's hands. He leans down and hisses next to William's ear, "I _will_ find a way to kill you."

William sleeps, oblivious. Nathan can't rail and shout, though he wants to. William took from him the physical capacity to really show himself up. He starts to turn his back, and that's when Gloria comes back in.

"What are you doing?" she asks instantly, sharply.

Nathan raises both hands in a gesture of innocence and keeps his back to her and a sullen silence while she checks William over anyway.

"Can I see Audrey?" he asks, finally turning.

"I guess that's a fair request. But no funny stuff." She berates him in advance.

There's not a lot he can say to an Audrey who lies still and sleeping, but there's so _much_ he needs to say. He leans against the gurney, energy sapped by the day even though most of it was spent sitting down, and he settles for stroking her face gently. "I'm sorry. I'm so, so, sorry."

She came back to Haven and found him with Duke. She let him live and lost him. At that time, he would have gone to Audrey. She would have killed him, and the Troubles would have been over. Instead, as Lexie, she drove him back to Duke and refused to put a bullet in his heart.

Nathan wonders if it will still work. But since the Teagues found the riddle and Jennifer saw the human-eyed crabs, that course has been abandoned as a way to end the Troubles. Audrey loving him, if she still does, is irrelevant to everyone but himself and Audrey.

And Duke.

Faithfulness is something he has failed at spectacularly. He always thought of himself as an honourable man, as someone who would do the right thing. He supposes holding convictions like that wasn't a matter of choice until, unprecedentedly and bizarrely, he found people queuing up to love him. Audrey, Sarah, Jordan, Duke. Maybe it's a sad thing -- he's so starved of affection he's just incapable of saying _no_.

He gives Audrey's hair a last stroke, imagining it blonde. Then he pulls his hand away and steps back. The world reels and rocks beneath his feet. Gloria catches his shoulder.

She walks him to the front door, and calls Stan up with a sharp whistle to help him down the steps.

***

Nathan goes home -- food for Dwight's spy ring -- and sends a text to Duke from his couch to let him know he's there.

Duke doesn't come. Nathan falls asleep on the couch and wakes up after 8pm, to find a reply from Duke that says he's going back to the _Cape Rouge_ and he'll let Nathan have his own space tonight.

Nathan sits and stares at it, knocked back by confusion. Dwight must have got to him. Nathan starts to form an angry reply, then realises he can't do this by text message, or by phone, but he takes the phone back out again as he's stopped on the front doorstep by the absence of the Bronco. He phones a taxi.

He arrives at Duke's boat in a foul mood, a long way from conducive to negotiations. He's ready to go over to Dwight and tear him a new one for interfering after Nathan explicitly expressed his intention to stay with Duke.

Duke's locked him out -- which spikes more anger, even though it's right and reasonable that the doors should be locked, because Duke has enemies in Haven. Nathan bangs on the metal door with his right fist, the only one he can lift that high, hard enough to put fresh bruises on the edges of his palm.

There's a yell of, "Hang on!" from within. A moment later, Duke opens the door with a gun in his hand. He lowers the gun instantly but Nathan's eyes catch the split second where his face freezes. "Nathan. You--"

"What the hell did Dwight say?" The volume he's trying for is too much for his throat. His voice disappears in the first word and comes out in a scrape as he fixes it in time for the last two words.

"Dwight?" Duke asks blankly. Fear lines his face. Maybe this is not what Nathan assumed.

Words fail. He wants to know, _Why don't you want me?_ Nathan is trying his best. Maybe there's nothing left of interest, after Duke had him in every way possible, under the throes of madness -- but that can't be it. He _knows_ it can't. They're more than that. He's been trying so hard, the last thing he expected was for Duke to be the one to back off.

He's not sure how much of that shows in his face, but Duke stammers, in fast panic, "I-- I'm sorry, man, I just wanted to give you space. It doesn't feel right if I'm pushing myself on you, after what happened. You went over there. I was kind of relieved. I figured that was easier. I _wasn't_ trying to--" He swallows, pulls it down to something more level. "To ditch you. Or anything like that. I _want_ to be with you. It's just that right now, I don't know how. Those things I did... the blood might not be a factor any more, but I still _did them_. I don't know if I'm doing more damage."

If Duke hasn't seen Dwight, he doesn't yet know that it wasn't him who did the damage.

Nathan's rage collapses. He reaches in and grips Duke's arm, the one holding the forgotten gun to the floor. "There's something important I need to tell you."

"All right," Duke gulps. Nathan can feel him shaking, even through his jersey. Duke lets him in, turns and hesitantly breaks the hold on his arm to lock the door after both of them. They walk down into the galley. "Do you want to drink?" Duke asks, grabbing a bottle from a cupboard.

Nathan wants to sit down. He does, then shakes his head and explains, "Painkillers. You go ahead."

Duke pours himself a tumbler of the scotch Nathan likes, from the bottle he already got out, then sits down too. Nathan lets the tumbler rise and then clunk back on the surface of the table before he mounts a campaign to catch Duke's fingers. Even in the midst of all this, so much horror and wrongness alongside it, he can at least find relief and some recompense in _feeling_ Duke's fingers.

Nathan tells him about the psychiatrist. About dissecting the last two weeks of their lives. About William's goo-balls being inside their heads -- Duke's head for certain.

When he's finished, Duke swears and says, "You _idiot._ It should have been _me_. Setting aside even the fact I can't believe you let the Guard muck around in your brain, it should've been me." Then he goes quiet, and sits and rocks slowly in place, face pale, eyes staring into nothing.

Nathan blinks. In the moment, that option had never occurred to him. But, _no_. Nathan might have had to relive being cast as the victim, but Duke's blood-madness would have been worse, and remains a real enough issue without any need for William's influence. The last thing they need is anything that could tip him further over the edge. Better for Duke that it all stays as blurred as possible.

But since the point is academic now, he doesn't say that. He watches Duke carefully and tries not to worry about how long it's taking to absorb this. It's a major shift. It changes things. It's not unreasonable to give Duke more time. Nathan clasps and rubs his hands, waiting.

"So I killed you as--" Duke finally starts to ask.

"As _you_ , but we both knew that anyway. The rest was _not you._ "

"But it could've been." Duke's long indrawn breath is loud. "This is still dangerous. Being with you--"

"I'm not Troubled," Nathan reminds him.

"The _habit_ of you," Duke asserts, anguished. "Things... things that have taken root. If I were to--"

"You _won't_ ," Nathan growls, inasmuch as he can.

"What if William does that to us again? What if he Troubles you again?"

"I'm not going to run from hypotheticals," Nathan says, though his heart shudders at the thought of William getting hold of either of them, after this proof of just what he can do. They did not take him seriously enough before. Treated him as a dangerous clown. Not enough fear for the realities. "Right now, William's asleep. We have time to fix this. To at least know where we are, before Audrey... Before we have to deal with Audrey. You said everything that needed to be said last night." He heaves a breath. This is getting difficult. These are things Nathan Wuornos doesn't say. "I don't want this to be the note we go out on."

"No," Duke agrees slowly, giving him a look that is strange. "Nor me, Nathan." He lifts their hands and kisses Nathan's. "It's almost funny. I try to let you go, and you come over here like a force of nature to throw it back at me." Nathan's heart does a fearful somersault, the kind he used to feel even when he couldn't feel. Duke clarifies, "It was just meant to be space, only for this evening. I was... afraid, though. Last night, we were so desperate to push. Today I started to think... we were just fooling ourselves. I don't _want_ to lose you, but trying to hang on feels selfish, after everything."

"It's not selfish if I want it too." Nathan's voice is playing up again. He feels his hands, wrapped and caressed, in Duke's hands, and his eyes drift shut, leaving him with the sensation overtaking everything. "You know _exactly_ how much of an asshole I am when it comes to things like this. If you try to run, I'll come after you with the cuffs."

Duke makes a choked noise. Nathan opens his eyes and is aghast to discover him crying, real tears, red eyes and snot, far from Hollywood sobs and a few artful moisture sparkles. He's crying as he presses his face into their clasped hands.

Nathan ditches the barrier of the table between them, standing awkwardly, manoeuvring around. Duke remembers Nathan's broken ribs and curls arms around his waist. Nathan puts hands on Duke's bowed head and promises, "I'm going to kill William." Adds the qualifier, "Somehow." He can still shoot a gun, even in his current crappy condition. The problem is separating William from Audrey to do it.

"You say the most romantic things," Duke mumbles, head lifting slightly, to Nathan's utter relief. "Then again, it's _you_. And by the way, I am going to help."

"Fine by me." As long as he doesn't use his Trouble to do it. But Duke's more than the Crocker Curse, and he can hold a gun, too. "...Tomorrow," Nathan adds. Going back home feels unnecessary and exhausting, but he left everything on when he charged over. "Do you want to come back to mine? Get Chinese delivered. Watch TV."

Duke makes an interested grunt and digs his face out from Nathan's waist. "Did you TIVO any of the matches we missed while we were obsessed and insane? Or just thirty hours of crime procedurals?"

Nathan has both, but he thinks he'll let Duke have his way and opt for the sports tonight, even though Stan's probably already told him all the results.

***

It's strange -- or bitterly ironic -- to think that their relationship has been so much based on the _physical_ all the while Nathan couldn't feel, and now that he can feel again, they're half afraid to touch each other.

He lies on the couch propped by the same cushions he left earlier, having found the best position to support his neck and upper chest with minimum pain, while Duke doles out the take-out. In Nathan's case, that's a carton of Miso soup and some softer pieces of beef and noodles that Duke picks out for him. Nathan pulls up his feet, Duke sits carefully at the other end of the couch, and they eat. The Red Sox start to lose badly, the end scoreline already indelible in Nathan's mind. Maybe Duke's, too. It's always possible Duke also had the scores today and is humouring _him_ in return.

They've been picking at the remnant of their meal a while when Duke gets up and puts both their near-empties aside, then comes back to sit as before. He strokes a finger over the sole of Nathan's foot, across the ridge below the join of his toes, and shoots him a questioning look, brows lifting.

There is still fear in his eyes.

Nathan nods very slightly. He uncurls his knees and gives his feet over for Duke to pull onto his lap. Duke peels down the socks he helped put on this morning. Nathan's feet look uglier than usual in this room's bright light. Duke encloses his hands around the slightly misshapen toes and holds them there, warming painful joints, letting the heat in his palms sink in. Nathan sighs, and as Duke's hands start to move, feels the rest of his body relaxing.

Tension, draining out, carries with it some of the pain. He did not realise he was so tensed up. He thought he'd already been relaxing. Duke rubs his thumbs down the centre of one foot, and nerves all over the rest of Nathan's body suddenly seem to have a direct line to it. Nathan shudders, and Duke does it again. Unintentionally, Nathan flexes the heel of his other foot into Duke's groin as he groans this time.

Duke makes a startled but happy little noise. He looks up with a light in his eyes that's delightedly silly and mischievous, almost like Duke again.

Nathan flexes and focuses. He feels... the catch of metal between his big and first toes... He tries to snag and pull but loosens the zip only a little before the grip fails. Tries again. The zip makes a long noise as he draws it down. He can only get halfway, from this angle, until Duke turns and bends one knee up onto the couch. "I really don't know if I should be doing this," he admits, pausing, eying Nathan's dubiously, and lightens it by adding, "Kind of embarrassing if I ever have to admit I had Foot Sex."

"It's probably the only bit of me that doesn't hurt," Nathan reaffirms wryly. It's a lie, but his feet at least hurt with an old, familiar pain, and that's almost comforting in its own way. "Oh, come on, this is almost normal, for us." And it's safe, silly, and non-penetrative. Nathan works Duke's zip down the last fraction and knows he could not have done it without sensation. To some extent, this is as much about the challenge as anything else. He picks at the button on Duke's jeans, screwing up his toes.

"Fine," says Duke, groaning like it's a chore but grinning like an idiot. Desperate things also remain in that grin, but Nathan focuses on his foot. "We will do Foot Sex." Duke picks up the foot he's holding, raises it higher, and nuzzles it against his chin, scratchy stubble and soft hair. Nathan makes a sound, overwhelmed by texture on the sensitive skin. Duke licks him, just on the arch, working his tongue into the hollow there, and he hisses at the unexpected addition.

"Can you..." Duke hesitates. "Can you touch yourself?"

Nathan... well, he _can_ , but he's happy not to. It comes to him anew how they've never not been about sex.

"You couldn't even feel your own hand," Duke adds, "for nearly four years. I want to see you touch yourself."

Nathan isn't sure why Duke would need that, the way his eyes say he needs it, but he reaches for his own zip with both hands.

"You don't have to," Duke says quickly, reversing.

Nathan eyerolls and slides a hand inside his jeans, but doesn't do anything except move his fingers slowly over his length, sliding his little finger and thumb back to touch his balls while the rest of his hand cups lightly. His breathing tightens. _There_ is sensation. _There_ is control. He doesn't need anyone else... Audrey... even Duke... to do it for him anymore.

He keeps his hand there, feeling boneless, and explores Duke with his foot, peeling aside annoying fabric, trying to unfurl him from his jeans. The attempt ends in an, "uh," and "ow," and then a swift, guilty dive of Duke's fingers to resolve the puzzle.

"Is this foot clean?" Duke asks suspiciously of the one he's holding against his chest, and just licked.

Nathan laughs at him. "It was this morning."

Duke, who is sometimes amusingly fastidious, wrinkles his nose and goes back to kneading it with his fingers. Nathan curls his other toes around Duke's shaft, and copies the contact with the hand on his own cock, reminding himself what that feels like, _exactly_ that. Not having to try and mimic life anymore. Being able to feel it out for himself. Because if it doesn't work, he can change the angle, know just where to apply pressure to make Duke buck his hips despite himself. "Ngh. Oh, God. You are such a freak of nature."

No, he's perfectly normal, now.

"Give me a foot massage, Duke. No hands allowed," he orders. It's half a ploy, because he can't move energetically enough to do much more than he's already doing. But Duke draws up his thighs to compress around Nathan's foot, and thrusts upwards into the arch with his hardening cock, taking on the challenge. Nathan's other foot gets hugged but mostly forgotten between his fingers.

Duke comes panting and half laughing. He's still not without those traces of desperation, but maybe it's... less... "I don't even. What even _was_ that?" he mocks.

Nathan sighs. His neck rolls back and he could almost sleep. He didn't come, and there's a tension in his genitals, but it's poised between comfort and discomfort. He never got completely hard to start with. In a way it feels kind of nice. He can lie back and feel _real_ , if he can just let himself forget the _how_ and the _why_.

On the big screen TV, the game has been thoroughly lost, though quarter of an hour of play remains. Neither of them could care less about missing it.

"Come on." Duke tugs at Nathan's legs. "You're half asleep already. Let's go to bed." He grimaces. "I'll wash your foot."

***

Since they went to bed early, they shouldn't wake at a normal time, but they do, testament to how exhausted they've both been.

Nathan lies still, contemplating his pills on the living room coffee table downstairs, and it's half an hour before his shallow breathing has turned into a serious enough problem that he pokes Duke awake with his toes. "Pills," he says, succinctly. "Table. Downstairs."

Duke rolls out of bed like a shot and goes to bring them back, along with a glass of water.

"Idiot," he says, lying on his face next to Nathan and sliding a hand over him, distracting him with comforting, light touches, and doesn't leave again to get morning coffee until another half-hour has passed and Nathan's breathing has started to normalise. He slides a hand over Nathan's hip in a firmer grip and asks, "Okay now?" before he leaves.

Which starts the day with both of them shaken and scared, but Duke comes back to bed with the coffees, and by that time Nathan's managed to get himself out of bed, to the bathroom and back, and is sitting up.

"This sucks," Duke says, handing him a mug. "And I just realised I topped up your coffee with cold water. Habit. Sorry."

"It's fine." He's been so used to temperature not being a part of the equation that hot food is weird to him now anyway.

"I got..." Duke scratches his head, and exudes frustration. He sits cross-legged on top of the covers and picks his own mug from the night stand again to sip at it. "All this time, I thought I was trying to keep in mind that your Trouble didn't mean you didn't _hurt_ , just that you didn't feel it. Now I realise part of me was still thinking of you as invulnerable, in a way, all along."

Nathan doesn't know what to do with that admission, so he just sips at his lukewarm coffee.

"Sorry," Duke says again. "It's weird."

"Stop apologizing." Nathan's voice is husky after the breathing attack. "Stop feeling guilty." It's starting to make him cross. How dare Duke be on edge, making things so much more difficult, when _Nathan_ is the one who got hurt? He just wants things to be normal between them again. "I'm the one who did this to you, too. We know what my blood did."

They drink coffee., Duke does some yoga stretches, changing his posture on top of the mattress. Nathan sits still.

"What's it like?" Duke asks, head upside-down, back arched. "Feeling again?"

Nathan groans gently. The pillows are soft against his back, but there's a knot in the centre of it. His ass is going numb from sitting, but not the _real_ sort of numb, just the pins-and-needles version of it which is far too much sensation to come near the word. His injured ribs and neck send out pulses of pain that tell him all the pills haven't quite finished taking effect yet. There's insistent sensation centred below his belly. "Right now? It hurts, and I need the bathroom, but getting up means moving my neck or compressing my ribs."

"Huh."

It's an evasion, but maybe he can break it to Duke by increments that he didn't want this.

Duke attacks the situation practically, though. "Here, let's get you up. It's about muscle groups, what to use and what not to. You might have to re-learn some stuff, after this long without pain to guide you. You can raise your right arm, can't you? So do that... Use that arm to support your head." He moves Nathan's hand and elbow. "The left one you can use for leverage to push up, if the pain's not too bad. Try to hold your back muscles still, here, and move from the lower abdomen and hips."

It's still hard, but it's better. Nathan stumbles off to the bathroom again. When he comes back, Duke watches him cross the room, serious and considering. "You really might need occupational therapy. Not just because of the injuries."

Nathan sighs. "I've had it before. Moving to put the least strain on things, how not to stress joints without being able to feel any warning signs. That sort of thing." But it's been at least two years since he last went. Practices flounder over time. He's probably strained and damaged a bunch of stuff in small, permanent ways that he won't really begin to notice until the major pains of his current injuries subside.

He climbs back into the bed, but not into his previous place on his side; over on Duke's side, crawling forward on his knees, kind of straddling Duke, except Duke's in too weird a posture to really call it straddling. Duke looks nervous and then, as Nathan leans over and licks at his thigh, falls over.

Nathan snorts. "Very elegant."

"No." Duke rolls over and scuttles clear. "I... _you_ might pretend nothing has happened, but I can't. Especially after you've just spent an hour pinned to the bed by pain. Jesus!"

" _Duke_."

"I can't have sex with you, Nathan. The other night was -- we were clinging on. Neither of us had really processed _anything._ I can't do it. Don't you _get_ that?! I hurt you. Really, badly, hurt you. I half feel like I shouldn't even be near you. The foot thing was... well, fucking weird enough to slip under the radar, I guess. How can I possibly fuck you, knowing what I-- I burned my bridges, okay? It's only been _two days._ "

"Audrey," Nathan says flatly. They don't have _time_ to do this the soft route. Nathan needs to _know_. "And I wasn't planning on letting you fuck me, thanks. I'm on liquid foods already for the neck problem, and I can still barely bear to take a shit. But I don't see any reason I can't fuck you."

"Oh." Duke flails a bit. "I thought you'd want -- never mind." His relief is palpable.

What Nathan _wants_ is going to have to change, because it led to the nose-dive into Duke's dark side, and it doesn't really matter when and how William added his weight to it, from a certain perspective, because that much was _there already_. They weren't careful and they weren't sensible and... honest to God, Nathan thinks that most of it has been burned out of him, anyway, now.

Most. Not all.

Duke was always damned flighty about that sort of thing. He's going to be impossible now.

Doesn't matter. Nathan's... screwed up. And he has to change. What they do needs to change, if they're to... survive, in more ways than one.

"How do we manage this?" he asks, since Duke's wild-eyed look has worn off now, and he's kind of relying on Duke to figure out how to make it not hurt.

Duke counters with, "Do you even have lube in this house?"

"Uh..." It's a valid point.

"No." Duke gets up. "You have olive oil. I'll go and get it. You... keep focused on this being a good idea, or something, since you need to do that enough for both of us."

"It's a good idea, Duke!" Nathan tries to yell the words after him as Duke clatters down the steps. The discomfort in Duke, the way he's so clearly humouring Nathan's ideas, doesn't sit well with him. He's not hurting Duke further by pushing this. Is he? They can't start to fix themselves until they know. They have to _know_ if they can fix themselves before Audrey is back. And Nathan needs to... He tries to think if there's anyone he can ask for advice about sex, other than Duke. Is he willing to ask Anna Benedict for that kind of advice? A panicked flutter starts in his chest, deeper than his hurting ribs.

"Okay, okay, okay..." Duke walks back in, fingers slick and squeaking and a cleaned out jam jar with a little oil in the bottom in his other hand. "I did _not_ bring the bottle in because I know you, and I know that thing ends up right back down in the kitchen if I do that, so... no." He perches on the bed and puts the jar down, balanced. Slips a hand between his own legs.

"Let me." It's probably the one part of this Nathan's definitely able to do. At least he can use his fingers if the rest of his body proves too damaged.

"Okay..." Duke holds the jar. He settles down on his right side and Nathan moves in close behind him, resting on his right elbow. Pulls in a pillow to help bolster his neck. He holds his left hand out for oil and then moves it down, sliding slick fingers into Duke from behind, feeling his way.

He doesn't have to see what he's doing anymore. That's a learning process in itself, but it lets him be instinctual, not all thought and calculation, reaching in the dark.

Duke moans, and he knows that Duke did not feel aroused until a few seconds ago. "Okay, that..." His breath hitches. "It's a whole lot less frightening when I know you can feel what you're shoving at."

"Just because I can, doesn't mean I have to behave." Nathan adds another finger, slightly too soon, but quickly pulls it out again and works Duke some more, gently, very gently, when he doesn't get the incoherent splutter that usually generates, only a silent stiffening of muscles and a body full of tension underneath him.

Duke will take it, right now, he realises. Because Duke does not believe he has any right to complain. So Nathan needs to be _careful_ , and not screw around, no matter what their patterns of behaviour have been in the past.

"Sorry." He leans forward, with some cost in pain, and kisses Duke's shoulder.

"Asshole," Duke mutters into the sheets.

"Are you ready?" Nathan asks, unsure he can trust his impressions, used to different limitations. He can't hurt Duke; doesn't want this to play out like some kind of twisted tit-for-tat, even if Duke might go for that, or at least think he deserves it. "Do you think you're ready?"

"Go," Duke grunts.

"Help me," Nathan counters. It's easier to slap his hand on Duke's hip and guide him upwards than it is for _him_ to try to shuffle downwards until their hips are aligned. Nathan's erection has been a growing distraction, and now the unused-to heat and intensity makes him feel like he could burst. "It's going to be quick again," he warns, with faint shame.

The first time he actually _feels_ himself slide into Duke, it's very close to too much. The pressure... even more heat... and it seems to carry up his body in a rush that engulfs his head and sounds like the ocean. He makes a frankly ridiculous noise that has Duke laughing underneath him. He tries to move his body, to gain the leverage to push without sparking the pain. They both shift, trying to find a position that works. Nathan wants to _move..._ He doesn't want to end up on his back, pinned under Duke. He thinks Duke understands that, because he eventually hisses, frustration and tension mixed in with laughter at the sheer absurdity of them scrabbling around failing to have sex, "Get up, get _up_ and sit on the edge of the bed. I can take the strain without you taking the weight..."

He wraps a leg around the back of Nathan, and clamps his hands tight around his own leg and _not_ Nathan, leaning to carefully position his centre of gravity and breathing hard into Nathan's shoulder as he starts to bump up and down, fucking himself on Nathan's cock.

Nathan holds Duke's hips and worries that they're both going to end up on the floor, and that that will hurt, too, but after a minute or two establishing stability, worrying about Duke's comfort even as he marvels at his _physicality_ , he does manage to lose himself in having sex with Duke, and shake the distraction of all the complications the act has become bound up in.

"Come on, Nathan..." Duke pants, hot and sticky from the sheer effort of the position, rolling his face against Nathan (gently, carefully). "Come with me..." Without recourse to his braced hands, he lifts his head and trails his hair, his cheek and nose over Nathan's face, chin, brow, not quite managing to target a kiss. Then he starts up a heavier, more deliberate rhythm, carrying them onward. Duke's cock is already leaking against his belly and Nathan's chest between them, and Nathan wants to touch... Duke's cock, his face, the flexing muscles of his arms and chest... but he's pretty sure that if he tries, they _will_ fall over. He manages to move, to thrust upward with his hips, clutching his hands harder around Duke so he doesn't rock them clear of the bed.

Then they're both _there_. The inside of his head is a fragmented mess, coping with too much sensation, overloaded and ablaze. Duke's body goes floppy as he comes and Nathan feels them start to slide. Even as they're both realising... He clutches and rolls frantically. Their bounce off the mattress takes most of the force out of the fall before they slide helplessly to the floor. Duke manages to put himself underneath, bracing Nathan at shoulder and hip. He grunts with the strain. "Fuck it."

Nathan laughs breathlessly -- the noise hitching slightly with pain from his ribs, but not too much. He kisses Duke, who kisses back between trying to find his balance and slide all the way off of Nathan. "You're a nutcase," Duke says, between kisses. "Get off me." Then he sucks Nathan's tongue into his mouth. Picking themselves, and each other, up is a gradual process because of distraction as much as anything.

"Okay..." Duke grunts, pulling his mouth clear, as they're standing toe-to-toe. "That was _not_ just going through the motions."

Nathan shuts him up again with another kiss, although getting the angle is hard when he can't tip his head.

They eventually sprawl back on the bed, Nathan unrolling carefully, planned muscle groups bracing.

Duke says, "I really do hope you're not shitting me that Garland never slept in this bed."

"He _didn't_." Nathan's exasperation is sated and relaxed.

"This wasn't your room when we were kids."

Nathan's startled he remembers. He can think of two, maybe three, times that Duke was at his house, and that was about twenty-five years ago. "It was the guest room. I didn't want to move back into my old room, but I sure as hell wasn't taking dad's."

Duke grunts acceptance, then curses.

"What?"

"It's 8.45, dumbass." He scrambles off the bed. "We need to work. I promised Tracey I'd be in 9AM _sharp_. And we need to shower. Jesus! Your fucking ribs -- it took half an hour to work around that yesterday."

Nathan grunts and makes for the edge of the bed in a landed-fish sort of flail with the right half of his body. "Screw it. We can aim the shower head beneath the strapping and I'll just wipe down the rest." He promised Dwight. He was not going to screw up the big guy's trust today. But given his feelings about the last conversations he had with Dwight yesterday, he doesn't particularly care if he ends up going to work smelling of sex.

"No breakfast," Duke mutters.

"You're heading to a _restaurant_. Can you actually get take-out porridge?" Nathan thinks he might have to settle for a smoothie.

***

Duke drops him at work at ten past nine. Nathan sees Dwight looking out of the window at them, and orders Duke, "Get out of the car so I can kiss you goodbye again," and when Duke complains, adds irritably, "I can't bend my neck. Just do it."

When Nathan's finished, Duke shakes his head, dazed, and says, "I'm going to work for eight hours, not to Australia for eight weeks." Nathan gropes his ass and pushes their foreheads together, then kisses him again, just for saying that. "All right, I get it." Duke lifts his hands up in surrender as Nathan finishes and lets him go.

Duke drives away and Nathan tries not to look at Dwight, in the window, but instead to refocus his mind on radically different things. Realities start to float back in. Sex as a complete act, with no sensory pieces missing, shorted out his brain for a while, but there are still too many problems and too few solutions, and he and Duke are better than they were last night -- infinitely better -- but they still aren't okay.

Back to the problems, then.

"I'm sorry I'm--" he starts recalcitrantly as he leans into Dwight's office, in passing. Dwight still looks dazed from being a spectator to that kiss, but manages to cut him off with a brusque, "No, it's fine. We're not going to begrudge twenty minutes." Considering anyone else would be still on medical leave, Nathan thinks, but he doesn't get leave, or holidays, not anymore.

He scrapes a hand through his hair, feeling suddenly awkward. Making that stand with Duke, outside, was stupid.

But Dwight manages to fix his expression, change it instead to a gentle lift of his brows, and asks quietly, "Feeling better?"

Better than the last two days is not hard. Nathan ducks his head and responds, "Yeah." Then, he sort of realises that he does feel better. He still hurts, but the pills have it under control, it's faded into background. He still feels too much, which isn't pain, but it's _starting_ to become liveable. He's still buffeted around by his emotions at the slightest tap in any direction, but at least he's realising it when his reactions are weird. And at least he's not angry today. Everything is... faded. Dim.

Yesterday, in retrospect, was raw. Scraping the wound open again before it could heal. He supposes he could liken it to taking the poison shrapnel out. But self-surgery still isn't the greatest of ideas.

He looks back at Dwight. "Don't worry. I can work today."

Dwight huffs relief and gestures to his desk, moving toward the door. "Then we'll try again." His eyes stray to the window and Nathan wonders if today, Dwight actually _will_ swing over to the _Gull_ to question Duke. But he's less afraid of that eventuality now.

Dwight goes out and Nathan deals in paperwork, further reliving some of the more boring days of his time as Chief. At least he has practice in getting all the Troubles to look like normal freak events, mass hallucinations, or otherwise not Troubles on paper. Although frankly, Dwight is better at it. All his days of 'cleaning'.

In the course of the morning, Nathan calls Lucassi's old address, trying to track down the coroner, then his mother's mobile phone, which is listed on his employment record under 'next of kin'. He discovers that Lucassi's old house was levelled by one of the offshoots of the fault line -- not surprising he didn't know, when he hasn't exactly been out and about since the nightmare of that awakening. Going from a hospital bed to trying to take down William and his escalating, out-of-control Trouble on that first day of his new life. Fortunately for Lucassi, the sale had just gone through. He'd signed the papers and was staying in a B&B that night, planning to head out the next day. Afterward, he'd stayed in town because the hospital needed any extra medical staff they could lay their hands on.

"A dinosaur ate my phone," he tells Nathan. "Had to replace it." He's willing to watch over Audrey. "Better in the hands of a friend," he qualifies softly to Nathan.

Nathan calls Dwight to clear the plan, then Gloria, who is grumpy and relieved. Nathan reminds himself she hasn't had a lot of sleep in the last few days.

At lunchtime, he feels well enough to take a walk out. He walks stiffly down the street, acknowledging folks who recognise him -- the ones who don't look like they want to cross themselves; who don't have tattoos and glares -- and goes to look at the damage. He stands at the intersection where the road was split right across and stares at a two foot high ridge infilled by hardened lava, caught in the process of upwelling when the Trouble ceased.

"Hey." Nathan turns, and Duke is standing there, presenting him a grin and a large cardboard cup with a lid. It's hot against Nathan's palms as he takes it. It says _coffee_ on it, but Nathan doesn't smell coffee. Duke tells him, "Finest seafood soup. Today's special, not coincidentally. Also not coincidentally, we're running soup specials all week."

"Thanks," Nathan says, surprised and touched. He peels back the lid and sniffs. Turns the exploratory move into a deeper inhale. His restricted diet has been starting to piss him off. Gloria says he could have mashed vegetables, but he's never particularly liked the texture, and he can feel textures again, now. He sips.

"It's--" Duke starts to warn.

"Hot. I know." Nathan's smile pulls flat, but he turns slightly to hide it.

"Well, it would have been hotter if you'd been in your office," Duke amends, and sips at a second cup. He moves in at Nathan's side. "What brought you down here? You know, to the cataclysmic scene of disaster that you completely neglected to tell me about when you patted my ass and sent me off to work yesterday morning?"

Nathan rubs his forehead. "I suppose it's not surprising I forgot something."

Duke snorts. "Only in Haven could you forget this. You know it took me almost half an hour to find a route around it all? Well... some of that was because I had to stop to take a look. This is..." He waves a hand and settles on, "Unbelievable."

"Most of the townsfolk who were here at the end of last year aren't so impressed. Not after the meteor storm," Nathan divulges, a bit reluctantly because it's not something he likes to dwell on. He has wondered what it all looked like, then, at its worst. He never saw it. He'd got back to town as the sun was setting and he'd been run out by dawn.

"Yeah. I missed that one, too." Duke scowls. "It's not like you actually knew what _would_ happen if you shot Howard."

"No, but I knew that it could." Or he would have known, if he'd stopped to think about it. Audrey had said, at least, that the meteors would fall if she didn't go into the Barn. It wasn't unreasonable to assume that the Barn needed to leave with Howard, who had also come out of it.

Nathan frowns and scans the crack in the earth. Infilled, it's now stable, according to all the reports. There's no volcanic activity, hot spots, plate margins, in Maine, so no-one can say where the lava came from. But then, no-one in Haven is really surprised by that. "I wonder if William really meant to tear the town half apart or just never saw it going that far," Nathan poses. William strikes him as a joker first, consequences later kind of asshole. He had seemed to be backing Lexie's efforts to try and fix the Trouble, above and beyond the fact that he wanted _Lexie_ to be the one to try and fix it.

"I don't know," Duke says. His face scrunches in thought. "He's a twisted fucker. But even he's got to know that if he destroys _all_ the toys, then he can't play with them any more."

"It's all entertainment to him," Nathan murmurs. "Everything except Audrey. He was deadly serious about her."

Duke slurps soup.

"Do you think we broke her heart?" Nathan asks, his words cracking.

Duke jolts, curses and scrubs at a splat of hot soup on his sleeve. "Jesus, what a question." He stops. "Yeah. Yeah, with what we know now... Yeah, we probably did."

"I suck," Nathan says.

"A little bit," Duke agrees. "Look, we -- you -- we thought you had a matter of weeks to live. _Maybe_ you'd see Audrey again, but if you did, that was literally the end. There was no reason, then, not to... do the thing. Then we kept doing the thing and... the thing got _complicated_."

Nathan rolls his eyes.

"It's not actually got any less complicated," Duke critiques. "But Lexie... _No-one_ expected Audrey to pretend she was brain-wiped! To choose to save you, even though..." He sighs. "Thanks. Now I feel crappier."

"Thanks for the soup," Nathan tells him.

"Yeah. Don't mention it." Duke flaps a hand in sarcastic emphasis. "I hate you. Did this have a point?"

"William," Nathan says. "He loves Audrey. In... whatever fashion that man is capable of it. Motive, Duke. He was punishing us." He frowns, because something does not fit. Or sort of does not fit. "He also stopped before we killed each other. He was _surprised_." Nathan picks up before Duke can interrupt, leaving his mouth hanging open, "to find out you'd used the Crocker Curse on me. But he wasn't surprised by the state I was in. He knew exactly what happened."

"Bastard," Duke says moodily, kicking the ground, keeping his eyes down. He raises them, eventually, to study the devastation. "So do you think he stopped because we're toys too fun to throw away? Or is it because deep down he knows that Audrey wouldn't want us dead?"

"Maybe it really is as simple as that. They're connected. If there's no way to _hide_ from her what he does... He has to be true to what she'd want. Maybe he even feels what she feels."

"Huh," Duke cracks, "that would be kind of funny."

"But we don't _know_ because the guy's a... psychotic asshole that speaks only in taunts," Nathan growls, frustrated. He squashes his empty soup cup.

"I need to get back to work," Duke says. "Though I have to say, this little get-together? It cheered me up no end."

Nathan coughs wry laughter. "I'm just trying to solve our case." The murder of Nathan Wuornos. Maybe it was manslaughter, after all.

"C'mere." Duke puts out a hand and curls his fingers in Nathan's shirt, below the breastbone, below the damage, but he waits for Nathan to step in, to come to him. "There was method in me having the soup, too. Nothing worse than fishy seafood kisses, unless you're giving fishy seafood kisses back."

Nathan reaches up to touch fingertips to Duke's chin as their lips meet, and thinks he'll never get tired of feeling the brush of beard against his skin.

***

Nathan doesn't go straight back because he thinks it's probably paramount to his duties to familiarize himself with which bits of Haven got levelled in William's last and most drastic super-Trouble, after the discovery about Lucassi. The more he sees, the more he considers it a miracle the death toll stands only at three.

The injured and the numbers of those currently out of a home are considerably greater than three. Some of the latter are being housed in Reverend Driscoll's old church, where Nathan is not welcome, though he pokes his head in anyway, and in the sports centre, where he manages civil conversation with a few familiar faces.

By that time, his energy has almost run out. He could use a ride back to the station, but the roads around the block are so torn up he's on foot by default for most of the way. That's how he meets Gwen Glendower in the street. She looks strained and has red-rimmed eyes.

"Nathan," she says in surprise. Harsh exhaustion drags the greeting down. She looks as tired as he feels. "Are you all right? Do you need an arm?"

"I'm..." He puts his hand out and finds her shoulder as she moves in, just grateful in the moment for a means to find his balance, and feels soft wool under his palm, human warmth, before he can finish lying he's okay. They're not far down the street from the bakery, which is still defiantly open despite all the tables and chairs outside being tipped at odd angles after the road was left heaved-up and shifted. "Come for a coffee with me," he says, instead. He curls his hand on her arm and tries to fool himself that they're supporting each other.

The Glendower women have been lost in the upheaval, victims no-one knows about. They can't exactly put it about widely, what has happened to the men of the clan, who William twisted from only being confined to the water into lurking monsters of the ocean. They have killed, they have _been_ killed, and still the Glendower women can only wait.

"Cousin Robert died when the earthquakes hit," she tells him when they're sitting down. "The shaking split the tank, and he could only survive for minutes outside the water. I'm in town to make the arrangements. It will be... closed casket. He doesn't even look human any more in death."

"I'm sorry." Nathan puts his hand over hers on the table. If the Troubles had left when they should have, her family would not be divided, would be normal again, would not have had this horror visited upon them.

"It's not your fault." She looks at him sharply. "I would have killed, would have died, would have done anything to keep Cole at my side. Some decisions are only human. Some aren't even a choice... Only the illusion that we have a choice."

He remembers that she spent many years married to Ed Driscoll.

This, and yet it's his choices that keep her family apart, endangered, hunted.

"We will try to get them back," Nathan tells her.

"By killing another of them," she states flatly.

"No-- I don't know," he admits, reminding himself there is still Wade. "It might be the only way." Unless somehow they can get William to reverse what he's done, or Audrey can somehow learn enough from him to do so, without falling to the Dark Side. "I really am sorry."

"No." She shakes her head. "It's your people -- you, Dwight, that woman from the Guard -- that I owe for leading the hunt with tranquilizers and not guns. After what they've done, what they've become... If Edward's people were in charge, they would have been hunted down and killed long ago."

"We know they aren't to blame for what's happened," Nathan says, "and we _will_ keep trying. I'm sorry about Robert." That death was not included in the tally. He determines to make sure it is.

Gwen studies him across the table. Nathan awkwardly sips at a cup, sweet with much more sugar than he'd normally put in. "I heard you were hurt in the earthquakes, too."

Perhaps she's wondering how his throat came to be turned black by earth tremors. "I'm getting better. I... probably should be heading back to work." He thinks he can make it without passing out, now. He downs the rest of his coffee and hands her his card. "If you need anything at all... contact me."

Half the afternoon is over already. He feels beholden to Dwight to finish the paperwork and ends up working late, until Dwight returns to throw him out. "Audrey's with Lucassi," the big guy tells him, just before launching into a critical, "You shouldn't be here. You should also know that Dr Benedict chewed the Guard a new one today over the nature of this arrangement and your current... physical condition. You don't have to come in tomorrow if you don't want to." He snorts at Nathan's probably-obvious look of dismay. "Your choice."

What else is he going to do? He also severely doubts that Anna Benedict's professional testimony restricted itself to his 'physical' condition. He gives Dwight back a twisted smile and somewhat incredulous, "I'm getting _better_ , now." Two days ago he should have been left in a hospital bed. Yesterday, he shouldn't have been doing anything, let alone what he did do.

"Any new Troubles today?" he asks.

Dwight shakes his head. "We need the break. I feel like I should cross myself or something after saying that."

"I spoke to Gwen Glendower. Have you thought any more about Wade?" It is easier to bring this up when Jordan's not around.

"The problem with Wade is we'd be basically nominating a Glendower to kill," Dwight says, sighing ponderously. "Wade's not getting released and I am sure as hell not breaking him out. Not after seeing Dr Benedict's reports. The only way to do it would be to take an affected Glendower _to_ him. I'm not prepared to choose one of them to die. Or to ask the women to choose one."

"Cole Glendower," Nathan says, feeling his chest tighten and feeling like a traitor to Gwen, "walks out of the water and into a twenty year jail sentence when the Troubles end either way." And if he were able to be asked, Nathan is sure the head of the family would offer himself up as sacrifice for the younger men.

Dwight just looks at him for a moment, then nods slowly. "I can't say it hadn't crossed my mind as well. But Cole isn't in the aquarium."

Of course Dwight had already thought it. Nathan rubs his forehead. "We have to do _something_."

"If the worst of Duke's... failure to handle the Crocker Trouble... was caused by William..." Dwight starts.

" _No_ ," Nathan whips in furiously, and coughs from the unwise force of his voice, and tries to brace his neck with his hands so the coughing doesn't wrench it. Dwight awkwardly waits until he can go on. "Duke... William being behind it doesn't erase what happened. He still lost himself in the blood. I thought you of all people should know we can't risk it."

Dwight's face is very grave. "I like the guy, I do. He tries hard. But it's when you talk like that, that I can't help but think we've lost him anyway. I'm sorry, Nathan. I know that's not what you want to hear. But we still have _access_ to Duke right now." He hesitates. "At least when he snapped, he went down to the shore where the killer fish-monsters were and not after the attractive Troubled person of his choice... or even the _nearest_ Troubled person."

Until Nathan pushed him to it.

"I believe that he's a good man, but... Nathan, if we're going to talk about using Cole Glendower, we can't not even _talk_ about using Duke." He falls quiet a moment, then adds, "I've been twice to the _Gull_. I've texted, called... Nathan, he keeps dodging me. He's ignoring texts and refusing to accept the calls. Something is still very wrong. I saw him for half a minute that first day before you dragged him off home. Maybe you can't see it because you..." Dwight splays out his hands. "You're not..."

"Not Troubled any more," Nathan fills in gruffly. This hurts, it hurts too much and it's not even _physical_. There was method in what Duke did. Reason he had to do what he did to Nathan, there in that moment. Duke still believes it's the only reason they can be together now at all. Nathan tightens his fists at his sides. "I will _talk_ to him about that. I will _try_ to get you both in the same room." Nathan as a mediator is not going to be much of a barrier between the physical force of those two, at the moment. "It might be just as well to have Jordan there, too. She's not... technically... Troubled now, either.

"But I am _not_ throwing Duke away. We don't give up on him." He holds Dwight's gaze until the big guy nods.

He has been equating Duke's progress _with him_ with Duke's recovery... or assuming, even, that fixing their relationship is the most difficult part. It's a shock to realise the two don't have to equate at all _._ He assumed that Duke had been going to the restaurant and putting in normal days of work, but he hasn't been there. He hasn't seen Duke at work. Maybe he should.

"Can I have someone take me to the _Gull_?" Nathan asks. He's tired, but this... Duke already matched Nathan's own text about working late, in kind, responding that he'd come over to collect him from the station when he finished. If Dwight is throwing him out now, Nathan will need the ride anyway. He decides he must try and drive tomorrow.

"I'll take you myself."

Nathan says with concern, "I'd rather talk to Duke _first_ before manoeuvring him into your company." The last thing he wants is to blindside Duke and set him on the defensive.

"Just a ride," Dwight assures him. "No provisos, no extras."

***

The coastal parts of Haven escaped the damage, on the face of it, though of course Glendowers lurk. Nathan sees the end of the day from the deck outside the _Grey Gull_ , sitting at a secluded table and nursing a glass of thick, fresh-squeezed orange juice as a demonstration of Duke's determination to feed him vitamin C. The authentic shreds of fruit floating in the drink make their presence known again the inside of his mouth unsettlingly. He watches the sun climb down the horizon. Red bands light the sky, glowing like lava that gently cools as the dark grey edges drift and multiply, leading into night.

Nathan didn't pick the table because it was secluded, though it's undoubtedly a bonus, but because from there he can watch Duke through a window. See him pottering around the bar.

It's not about comfort or (directly) about affection. Duke no doubt thinks those things, as he looks up and smiles, waves, and on one occasion when he's particularly quiet and unwatched, blows a kiss and no doubt finds it amusing that Nathan gets flustered, feeling his face heat up and having to look away. For the rest... maybe Duke doesn't think he sees. Or maybe Duke thinks it's self-evident. Obvious. Something he simply should do. Because he doesn't seem to be trying to _hide_ it from Nathan.

He's fine with ninety-five percent of the people who come through the bar. Serves them cheerfully, seeming himself again, encouragingly _himself._ It's when someone they know to be Troubled approaches that Duke ducks away, swaps places with Tracey, or disappears into the back until after that person is served and gone. 

If Duke doesn't feel like he can deal with Troubled people in proximity... not even in his bed or particularly underfoot in his life, but a simple business transaction and chances of drawing their blood almost zero... 

It's a problem. It's _not_ the size of problem Dwight seems to think it is, but Nathan can see that it's a problem. At least Duke's reasons for avoiding Dwight are innocent -- he's just doing what Nathan's been watching him do here at the bar. Distancing. Ignoring. Excising the Troubles from his life.

Duke has professed determination to help Nathan deal with William, but no interest in returning to any kind of work other than his restaurant. Since his extracurricular kind of work in the last few weeks involved drawing Troubled blood, that hasn't been surprising or suspicious. Much the opposite, Duke wanting to keep himself away from that role was positively reassuring. But Duke helped before his curse became a constant demand, and can still help without it.

He killed the Troubles from Nathan. Now he's killing them from himself... in a quiet, bloodless way that means everyone gets to go on living.

But it's not exactly a declaration of trust and it's certainly not _healing._

Nathan sighs. Every time he thinks things are getting easier, he discovers it's only because he's been blind to the newest layer of complication.

He's been there a while when Duke brings out two plates and lays them on the table with a flourish. Soup in front of Nathan, different from lunchtime's, and something more solid for Duke, which is unidentifiable except that it's covered in breadcrumbs and surrounded by crispy leaves and Nathan, with his soup, decides he's not going to torment himself by asking. "I'm off the clock," Duke says, sitting down. "But I didn't see any need to go home and then have to cook."

"No," Nathan agrees. He splutters a bit as Duke gets up again and steals a candle from the centre of a nearby empty table, where a couple have just finished eating.

Duke says with a slightly judgemental frown, "We have as much right to it as they had."

Nathan can't help it, but sometimes the thought of them together _is_ ridiculous. Putting them in the place of the lovey-dovey pair who've just finished their meal is a jarring realignment of his perceptions. To distract himself, he holds out a hand and bathes the tips of his fingers just over the top of the flame. In days gone by, he could have held them there forever. Now, after a moment, he has to take his hand back.

"So," Duke prompts, as they reach for cutlery. "How was work?"

Nathan abruptly finds himself at a loss for anything to say which isn't, "Dwight wants to speak to you about how you're avoiding Troubled people," and if not that, then not about Glendowers either. This definitely isn't the place or time. He manages to get out a few very boring comments about paperwork, and then Duke asks about Audrey and saves him from his own disease with words.

Perhaps that isn't the most cheerful subject matter either, but at least there's no trace of blood in it. Duke says, "Maybe we should go see her. Talk to her. They say people in a coma can hear."

The sunset is darker now and lights can be seen along the curve of the bay. It's almost beautiful, until you think of carnivorous sea monsters who should be people. 

"She's not in a coma," Nathan says. "It's heavy sedation."

Duke shrugs, pulling a face that says Nathan's a spoilsport, and always has been. "That doesn't mean we can't talk to her anyway. Wasn't Gloria freaking out because she seemed to be aware of William?"

"Talk to her and say what?" Nathan asks.

"That we're sorry? That we're idiots and we never meant to hurt her." At that point, Nathan has to swallow and shut up sharply. Duke isn't suggesting anything more than he spontaneously did when he was at the morgue, before. "Look..." But no, he _does_ have a plan, and Nathan can see it in the warm clarity in his eyes. "If William's really targeting us because Audrey's upset, we need to get through to _her_. Hell, it's nothing we shouldn't be doing anyway. We didn't _know_ , but we both kind of suspected, and we let it stand, because we were afraid. Don't pull faces. Afraid, Nathan. Be a man who can admit his feelings."

"Well, I _was_ the one marked for death," Nathan says snappishly. Duke doesn't even bother with voicing the argument that they both know that's not it. The whole conversation is a reminder that they're on borrowed time. Soon, perhaps any time, Audrey will wake up. William will wake up. And they had better be prepared -- on all fronts -- when they do.

"It couldn't hurt," Duke says. "And... I'd kind of like to see her."

Nathan nods and caves. "Of course. Lucassi and Stan moved her from the morgue this afternoon, so we can..."

He _sees_ Duke's face close up, his enthusiasm evaporate. 

_Lucassi_... Nathan thinks. Lucassi, too, is Troubled.

"Let's go home," he says abruptly. He's tired. He's _done_ with thinking about this right now. They've almost finished the food, and being with Duke in front of other people feels like a wretched waste. Nathan would like to _try_ to feel, and forget all the rest. It's screwed up and contradictory, _indulgent_ , but he can permit himself that much, for a little while. Even indulgence isn't easy at the moment, but at least he might get something out of it to keep him moving forward.

***

They have the debate in the car and go to Nathan's. Nathan is tired and the decision is shaped by the ease of being there, and Duke is too accommodating to his wishes. He's aware of that but too wiped out not to take advantage of it right now. Guilt still taints Duke's interactions with him and he isn't sure how to abolish that; how long it might take.

He meant to initiate something with Duke, and he was supposed to at least raise with Duke the issue about talking to Dwight, but once he's staggered through the motions of getting ready in the bathroom, he takes his pills and gets into bed, and falls asleep almost instantly while he can still hear Duke running the water through the open door.

When he opens his eyes again, gritty and heavy, it's morning. The sun is streaming through the big window and falling across the bed. Confusion rolls over him, then dismay. He lost an evening. Time isn't a luxury he and Duke necessarily have, and he let that much of it slip away.

Nathan sits up with a groan. His pills are on the nightstand next to a glass of water, where he had the foresight to put them, and he takes them, methodically. His throat flares pain at each hard swallow, but it's different again -- stiffer, more solid, less puffy than before. Inflammation is definitely starting to reduce by itself. But he still takes the pills. Not being able to breathe scared the fuck out of him, so he's going to take the pills until Gloria says he can stop.

Movement stirs next to him. "Weren't you just a sleepyhead last night?" Duke rolls over from a bundle facing the other way to a loose sprawl on his back, trailing the tips of the fingers on his nearer hand over Nathan's hip and thigh. Nathan hears the flick of pages as a book gets stuffed under the pillow.

"Apparently so," Nathan says, disenchanted. Either it's getting easier to move or he's getting used to the best ways to move to put least strain on his injuries, or a bit of both. He gets out of bed and pulls on the dressing gown hung on the back of the door. He's sure Duke's been walking around the house butt naked enough to give the elderly neighbours something to gossip about for the both of them. "You want coffee?"

"Sure, Nathan."

When he comes back in a short while later, he puts the mugs down either side of the bed then throws the dressing gown across the end. He sees himself in the mirror, straighter, less bruised, less _broken_. Steps closer to examine his neck. The colour of the bruising is changing, purpling under his chin. He visually affirms that he can turn his neck further on both sides before pain kicks in.

His ribs still hurt like hell -- he can already tell that damage is going to take far longer to heal.

His knees seem to creak as he climbs back into the bed. There are things occupational therapy warned him about, when his Trouble first returned in adulthood. Habitual over-extension of joints. Poor posture, strangling circulation, putting strain on his body all-unknowing. The last few years have probably racked up a bunch of those. That someday he'd pay was... well, always relegated to _someday_.

According to the clock, they have an hour and a half. Nathan crawls over Duke, who got his book out again. Nathan can't see the title but the cover definitely features someone sitting cross-legged. He puts a hand on Duke's knee and gives him a shake, not really sure if he's engrossed or just pretending because he doesn't want to let on he was watching the routine with the mirror. "Let's make up for last night. Unless the Buddha's so much more interesting, of course." He lowers his head carefully to kiss Duke's hip.

"No, I'm..." Duke pulls a face. "I guess you know I'm back to meditating again." Yeah, Nathan knows that. He wants to roll his eyes, but on the other hand, if it helps Duke... helps Duke feel more in control... "Well, that's what I was doing last night, after you opted out of the evening early." Duke pauses and asks a bit plaintively, "Have you ever thought about tantric sex?"

Nathan snorts. "No, Duke, I haven't. Let me guess. It involves incense, candles and the right sort of ambient music?"

"Doesn't have to." Duke looks pained. "Just that... there are things we could do. About trust, and building connections, and maybe... Maybe it would help? Also, hey, what the hell? It's got 'sex' in the title. I'm almost sure I shouldn't have to try all that hard to sell it to you, since you're the secret crazy nymphomaniac." He catches Nathan's hands and moves them up to his chest, one at a time. His grip never risks becoming too tight. Nathan notices.

"Are you good there?" Duke asks earnestly.

Like this, he is leaning over Duke, straddling hips with his knees. The relative immobility of the upper part of his body makes it unwieldy, but Nathan can cope for a short while. "For now."

Or possibly Duke just means that Nathan's straddling _him_ , pushing _him_ down, and not the other way around.

"Touch me," Nathan orders. "If you're hoping to make me go all New Age, then you'd better have prepared a good argument."

"I just think it's a good idea," Duke says, putting his hand on Nathan's cock. _Feeling_ lights up, sparks behind Nathan's eyelids. "It'd be interesting. Fun, even. You've got kind of a focused drive for this sort of thing. And yeah... It's about feeling. Different ways of feeling. Exploring touch. There's _purpose_ behind it. It could be like fucking and therapy at the same time. That's got to be worth more than any _other_ therapy, at least?"

Nathan grunts. "Saw a sex therapist back when my affliction kicked in again, too."

"Yeah?" Duke perks up in interest. His fingers rub in small circles at the base of Nathan's shaft, making it hard to think about anything else. "Wait... _you?_ "

"Ignored everything she said and shelved the whole idea of sex for the next three years," Nathan admits.

"Which is a sign you should be listening to Dr Duke now." Duke stretches up and kisses him. His fingers drift slowly. "Come on, are you seriously gonna say no to a practice that involves extended orgasms? Dr Duke knows best."

"As long as Dr Duke knows any joss sticks found near me may be inserted into places of maximum discomfort."

"...Anyway, I was _looking_ for positions originally, though this book is not so hot on the men plus men score. But for both our sanity we need to find things that don't involve my weight pinning you down. We need to find what works for us now. Like yesterday morning."

"When we fell off the bed?"

"Not falling would have been more ideal," Duke allows.

"I think I'm hallucinating this discussion." Nathan rocks his hips forward into Duke's hand. The deepening arousal in his groin is countered by a spike of pain down from his ribs into his braced left arm. He rolls away with a curse. "No. Can't do it." His breathing's abruptly turned heavier. He certainly couldn't fuck Duke from that position. Or, well, maybe he could if they got started quicker, because he doesn't have the staying power any more in other ways, either.

"Just lie down," Duke suggests. "Lie back on the centre of the bed and let me touch you. From the sides," he adds quickly. "Nothing threatening."

"I'm not made of glass," Nathan says sourly, curling his knees and sitting atop the covers, leaning on his right hand. "I'm _not_ afraid of you. That first night, I was _asleep_... That was the first night, besides. In fact, we should probably just get it out of both our systems." If his heart flutters unpleasantly at the challenge, at least he can hide it. But so long as he's telling himself he can get past it, he's pretty sure he _can_. It's probably about time they did push it.

" _You_..." Duke begins like that word is an expletive. He huffs, and he still sounds annoyed when he says, "All right, let's approach it your way... think of it as a trust exercise, lie back, shut your eyes, and let me do whatever the hell I want."

He's right in that it's daunting, and shouldn't be. Nathan lies down with butterflies in his stomach. Cracks open an eye again to add, "If you're trying to stealth sex therapy me, I swear I'll..."

"What?" Duke's face leans over him, from the side, and a hand gently tweaks his dick. "You'd actually _complain_?"

Nathan opts out of the conversation by shutting his eyes. The hand at his groin vanishes. Nothing happens for a stretch. He lies there, trying to keep his breathing even, trying not to lose patience or courage and lift his eyelids. Then, he starts listening for the crunch of the pages turning in Duke's book, fairly sure that he's been had. He readies to open his eyes.

The slightest touch strokes over his toes, and he jerks. " _Ow_." Raises a hand to rub at his neck.

"That's some reaction," Duke says, "considering you want to dive straight in at the deep end."

"I wasn't expecting it," Nathan complains, "because you took _forever_ to do it. I thought you'd gone back to reading your stupid book."

"..." Duke's reaction isn't categorisable as either words or noise: it's a barely-there disturbance of breath, but the rest of Nathan's senses haven't normalised yet with the return of touch, and he hears it. "Okay," Duke resumes with exaggerated patience. "Put your arm down." The mattress lifts and then drops as Duke swaps sides, and fingers snake down Nathan's lifted arm, unfurling it back to lie at his side. They tickle the palm of his hand, making Nathan's fingers twitch, then carry on up his wrist, up his arm, and back into the centre of his body. Avoiding the strapping over his ribs, and the cuts above that, a palm presses on the oasis of unbruised and unbroken skin in the centre of his chest, feeling his heartbeat. Nathan hears Duke's breathing get disturbed. Memories _there_.

After a few minutes, Duke starts to get it under control, and maybe there is value to this, after all. Giving Duke free access to his body again, after certain things have been closed-off, might help to work through some of that guilt. Nathan still feels compelled to comment, "I feel ridiculous."

"Complain away, if that's what you need to keep your macho image intact," Duke responds. He slides two hands over Nathan's stomach, around his waist, over his hips. Now, he must be leaning over to do that, but as long as Nathan keeps his eyes shut, the sensation and knowledge alone don't trigger anything. Duke slides fingers down the creases of his thighs, stopping just before more intimate territory. "I'm going to lick you," he warns.

So Nathan only jerks a little bit as a tongue slides over his cock, from base to tip.

"I hope you're planning to come back to that," Nathan says, voice wobbly, as the touch moves down to his knees. He adds, "You don't have to tell me."

He expects a grump of "Make your mind up", but Duke doesn't say anything. He feels his calves and ankles get stroked. It's like bathing in touch. There were times he wanted to go to Audrey and beg her to do something like this, but of course, he never did.

The touches travel back up his thighs. Nathan's whole body is alive and tingling. It's all been very gentle, but it's still beginning to feel like too much. Like he needs to come down before he can handle any more. He just isn't _used to_ this. He grabs for Duke's hands. Knowing where they are, solid in both of his, makes things instantly better. He breathes for a minute, then lets Duke's hands go. "Okay. Go on."

Duke was _supernaturally_ quiet through that, but his hands resume purposeful rings over Nathan's chest and shoulders, still avoiding the strapping. Nathan intakes a short gasp as one slides over his collarbone and up toward his throat.

"Sorry. Sorry," Duke says quickly. "I got carried away. But there's no bruising here. It's not where--" He sounds defensive and confused.

"I don't know where you touched, back then," Nathan says, a little bit too harshly, "because I didn't feel it. But you can touch my neck, Duke. Carefully."

The backs of fingers slide up it to get to his face, but it's quick and cursory, a token effort. Probably with the damage still there it's best to leave it at that. "Shut your eyes," Duke reminds him. Nathan reluctantly does. He feels a feather-light brush over the lashes. Then Duke walks his fingers back down over cheekbones, both sides, slides them over nose and lips, and starts to make repeating paths, spirals and circles, very gently.

Nathan huffs a breath against them as they change course to pass over his lips again, then, hesitantly, the tip of his chin... But they lift clear there, and don't venture into the territory where the worst of the damage and the broken bone lie. "Good?" asks Duke quietly.

Nathan almost feels like he's in a trance. "I get to do this to you, right?" he manages to pose, stubbornly.

"You can do what you want to me," Duke replies carelessly. There's a sound of him shifting, and Nathan feels the movement through the mattress he's lying on. Just when he thinks he can open his eyes, Duke's hands slide into his hair, fingers pushing at his scalp. An instant cascade of tingles rush from Nathan's head to his feet. All the will to move leaves him, and he sags. "Okay, so I will keep doing that," Duke puts in, with a trace of sarcasm. Nathan can't be bothered to answer. The world sort of drifts.

...Until Duke's touches start to go from soft sensations to insistent poking. "I cannot believe you fell asleep!"

"Wasn't asleep," Nathan grumbles, opening his eyes. Getting up is awkward because he seems to have sort of _sunk_ into the mattress. His limbs don't know this kind of relaxation, all fluffy and cloying, fighting against his attempts to move now. Numbness is _tense_. Numbness is not knowing what your limbs are doing without maintaining a certain amount of tension to carry muscle awareness. He rolls up with Duke's hands on his shoulder and lower back.

"We don't have a lot of time for shower and breakfast, if we don't want to be as late as yesterday," Duke says.

Nathan looks down with an objection on his lips, but finds he isn't hard. All that sensation, and his cock gave up on him.

Duke says, "You know it doesn't have to be sexual, right? We can do things, and they can be perfectly enjoyable, and they don't have to end in a sex act?"

Nathan glares, very much suspecting he's been outmanoeuvred.

"What I'm getting at," Duke says, "is maybe I just wanted to feel you. To watch you feel. I mean, it didn't matter if you did or you didn't... I kind of wasn't expecting you to drift off into the scalp massage and never come back, or I'd have gone there _after_. The point _is..._ " Duke pulls a face, "maybe we don't have to try so hard to hang onto what we've done before. Things are different now, and I'm not saying this just because of that night. You can feel again, and we should be working with that. Not the same stuff we had to do so you got something out of it when you _couldn't_ _feel_."

"And when precisely have we done those, since the... beach?" Nathan settles for the vague description as preferable to 'that night', words emerging a little too short. He rolls onto his knees. "What about _you?_ "

"I've had plenty of orgasms in the past four years," Duke says. "I--"

Nathan shoves him away and gets up, moving too quickly, grunting and keeping moving through the pain as it hits. "I'm not interested in your pity," he snarls. "It's supposed to be about _us_." He shouldn't have let Duke drag him into indulging in all that sensation. He knows full well he doesn't deserve it.

"Nathan!" Duke raises his hands with the exasperated, dismayed cry. "It is not _pity_ if I'm recognising you're a... sensation junkie... and saying we should just run with that until you're a bit less physically fucked up. Until _we're_ a bit less all-over fucked up."

That's what he says. But there's something very odd in his face as he says it. Something Nathan can't read. "We don't have _time_ ," he retorts. His voice scrapes. He grabs up his clothes and marches for the bathroom. He's going to have to wash, somehow, while avoiding the strapping on his ribs.

He hears Duke pound on the door and yell his name again behind the noise of the faucet, then things go quiet. His rage peters out. Duke's avoiding. He _knows_ that. It's not so surprising if Nathan has a few sore spots of his own at the moment, too.

He goes to open the door, naked and dripping. Duke is sitting outside with his back to the wall and his elbows rested on his bent knees. He looks up and they regard each other for a moment. "Sorry," Nathan says. "On one condition."

"What?" Duke gets fidgety and worried around his conditions. This is not new.

"I get to decide what we do tonight."

Duke smacks his forehead repeatedly into his knees. "We will try that," he says, then hedges, "or we will talk about that."

... _Damn it._ That reminds Nathan, abruptly, of what he was _meant_ to talk to Duke about, and hasn't yet. At this stage, there doesn't seem to be any way to do this but to come out and say it. "Dwight... uh, Dwight wanted me to mention something. He wants to talk to you. Says you've been avoiding him."

It's obvious in Duke's face that it's just as bad as he feared. Duke puts his head down as a tremor goes through him, and a sigh. "I _can't_."

"It's _Dwight_ ," Nathan says, pushing crossly. "Of course you can. He isn't going to do anything. But he's the one in charge around here these days, not me, so you should probably show him that you're all right."

"Dwight's Troubled."

Nathan drops to his knees, truly startled by the bleakness in Duke's eyes. He puts his hand on Duke's knee and shakes it gently. "It was _William_ driving the madness. _You_ still have willpower left. We only need to prove it. To Dwight, _and_ to you."

***

It seems remarkably unfair, to be in the position of having to put Duke back together as well as himself. But when Nathan thinks back, to how he was in the winter, he thinks maybe Duke's foundations have been shaken in a similar way to how his were, then. Nathan had done a terrible thing that brought death and destruction to everything he loved, to the people who relied on him. From what, exactly, could you try to _rebuild,_ if you were the villain? This has been very bad, but the core of self he'd managed to scrape back together before it happened is still more-or-less intact. Duke's...

Duke is the guy who fell into a blood-fuelled madness and misused and murdered his lover under its influence. Nathan supposes that the question of how you ever trust yourself again would loom pretty large, after that.

"No need to drop me at the station, today," he tells Duke. "Just take me as far as the marina. I need my car for some errands I want to run."

Duke looks dubious and only accepts the suggestion after he's watched Nathan ease stiffly behind the wheel of the Bronco and pull a few manoeuvres on the dockside. Even then, he insists they both go via the _Gull_ , so he can observe Nathan driving on the way. By the time they get to the _Gull_ , his concerns seem to have lifted. Duke pulls in and waves him on, face falling again in the rear view mirror, morose and fearful of what the day has to bring. 

Even though Nathan has told him he'll talk to Dwight, and see if they can put the meeting off one more day, until tomorrow.

Nathan goes to work. He takes a back-up pistol from stores, deciding it's high time he's carrying again, especially considering where he plans to go first, today. No new Troubles... most of the cases that came in overnight are minor infringements to do with looting. With so many properties and business premises in town battered and closed but not especially secure after the molten lava and seismic Trouble, that's become an issue. Chances are it's mostly kids.

His progress past Dwight's office is faster than it needs to be and he deliberately looks away after tossing the briefest of waves through the glass, hoping to be out before Dwight can catch him. He'll tackle the conversation about Duke _later_.

Something has been preying on his mind. An annoyance, a niggle. There are more important things to do, but considering what else he's planning, later, he needs to do this today, and doesn't want it to get lost under some new near-disaster, which is always too likely a possibility in Haven.

Besides, right now the tide is still out.

Curling back into the Bronco sparks up more complaints in his chest. He may be able to drive, but he can't sit that way for long, and it's difficult to keep his left hand on the wheel. He wishes he had Duke's ass-backward foreign truck, to handle the gear shift with the hand he can't easily raise. Maybe he'll ask if they can make a temporary swap. (Maybe not: he's not sure he wants to trust Duke with his car -- his life and his body, yes, under normal circumstances.)

He drives to the shore where three days ago, Duke and William between them almost took him down to splinters. He's finally starting to shed the feeling of being just the tattered scraps Duke sewed back together in an arrangement that better suited him, but he hasn't been back here.

Somewhere on this shore, he also lost his damn _gun_. It's been with him since he joined Haven PD, and he has no intention of letting it rot in a sea-cave if there's still a possibility he can find it.

Nathan picks his way across the rocks. Footing is treacherous, and trying to balance with limited movement in his left side is tricky. But if he leaves it much longer, the pistol will be gone for sure, and there are the rest of his reasons, besides. So he's doing this today.

There's nothing so melodramatic as a trail of blood. The sea comes up high here, and even up where he and Duke parked their cars, tide or weather have washed any remnant evidence away.

Nathan keeps his still-too-sharp eyes on the cracks and crannies between the rocks as he follows the most manageable route around to the cave. His feet follow the shallow path of where Duke dragged him, which is like a gully between the rocks, repository for soft sand and smaller pebbles. He ducks under the overhang into the cave.

Breath leaves his body and his heart starts to pound. Colourful blobs float in his vision. He turns his head into a rock face and presses his hand and chest there, feeling the damp, cold roughness, trying not to faint.

He didn't anticipate it would overtake him like this.

There's an echo in there, a way it has of spinning the sound around its walls, uncanny and eerie and very distinctive. He thinks it's the sound that brings it back, more than anything else. After all, it was dark when Duke dragged him here, and he can see it much better now, with daylight filtering in, so at least his visual input is completely different. He couldn't feel the cold, clammy dampness of its space, then, either, until the very end.

"Shit..." His hands are trembling and he makes himself spin, pushing the backs of his shoulders to the wall instead and reaching into his pocket for the flashlight he brought along, to search the corners and the crevices between the rocks. When he switches it on, the beam shivers all over the place. He tries to get control of his hands. If he can't face a cave, how does he expect to face the rest?

That thought steels him.

His breathing is a harsh sound for the echoes to play with. It slaps him with more sensory callback, because his breathing was also harsh then, and so was Duke's, as they fell into the act of destroying each other so utterly. Nathan makes himself take each step, shining the torch down at the floor, quartering the cave, searching.

When he finds shreds of the jacket he'd been wearing, that Duke tore off him, his sanity threatens to go into a tailspin. He hunches on the floor, ribs ablaze, and it takes a moment for him to wrench back control.

He absolutely needs to deal with this. Because Duke can't. Duke's centre is under attack... and Nathan helped to do it to him.

There are other pieces of his clothes. Nathan tightens his jaw and keeps moving, shining the flashlight around the cave. If the clothes are still here, the rocks and tide currents should have held onto his gun.

He spies it, finally, one of the holster straps protruding out of a gap between two rocks. He bends down painfully and catches the end, but it takes some tugging and more uncomfortable leaning in and manoeuvring to dislodge it from where it's been caught.

It's still clipped in the holster. He didn't draw it, and nor has the jostling of the sea. It really wasn't likely that he was ever going to use it to stop Duke. He doesn't remember even considering using it. Doesn't remember thinking about it when Duke took the possibility from him.

He wasn't defence _less._ He just didn't defend himself.

That's part of the problem. He doesn't want to die, but he's far too quick to start thinking its his due.

Obviously, that's not the only reason he didn't think to shoot Duke.

Nathan takes the gun out and examines it. It's going to need some TLC, a lot of cleaning, but there's no real reason it shouldn't be restored. He breathes out a sigh of relief he didn't know he was holding in and thinks, now, he can go back to his car and leave this place.

He pauses in the cave mouth and thinks of moonlight and lying on his back in that gully between rocks, Duke poised over him. Hours of hell that he went into with his eyes open. His old gun shivers in his hands.

Duke fucking a Troubled person on his downtime while actively trying to use the Crocker Legacy during the day was the stupidest idea ever.

Nathan leaves the cave but doesn't go back to his car, back to the station, yet. He walks along the shore, kicking the tide's lapping edge, and feels the dampness in his toes, the wet kiss of spray against his bare skin, the tightness of saltwater lingering after it, and the chill of the breeze off the ocean. Thought fades away. He could lose himself in his senses for the rest of his life, however long that would be. Stop fighting. Let the Guard make the decisions. He's surprised they haven't killed him already for not being Troubled any more.

He looks up at some shadow or noise. A familiar figure is striding across the rocks toward him. She stops just out of arm's length and says, with a wry acknowledgement to the way the words are being bandied around like a warning so often these days, "'Don't go near the shore'."

"I know. I... had to find my old service pistol." Nathan holds it up.

Jordan runs her eyes down him, then looks back to the cave, and a sick knowing draws her face taut, pulls the sides of her mouth down. "What is this, Nathan? Revisiting old times? You let me know if you start running out of ways to self-flagellate. I'm can have volunteers lining up to help you with that."

It's sarcasm and habit driving the words, no longer hate.

At his lack of reply she counters with silence of her own, pointing at the cave and staring at him, the question and all the challenge contained in her face. The thing is, she doesn't _give up_. When he tries to back off and turn, she just echoes his steps, high-heeled leather boots skewing to adjust seemingly without effort on the uneven rocks while Nathan's flat, practical shoes shuffle and stumble.

"...I'm _practicing_ , okay?" he says roughly. How much answer does she need to go away? "Why are you here?"

"Dwight saw you ditch out of the station, thought you might need a babysitter."

Nathan internally seethes. His teeth _click_ hard. 

\--Wait, Dwight sent him _Jordan_?

She sees it in his face. "You look like you just swallowed a wasp. Pretty funny, huh? But I know a thing or two about being hurt by someone you trusted."

For a moment, Nathan thinks that's a dig at him, but he's forced to push aside the automatic rise of his irritation by the dark compassion in her eyes. She's not talking about _him_.

 _Shit_.

"What happened wasn't Duke's fault." Nathan struggles to get the words out, fighting against his damaged voice, with ice water in his veins. "It may even be mine."

"Bullcrap," Jordan says, too quickly and angrily for any true reflection. Her face screws up as she watches Nathan's reaction. "Aren't you tired of guilt? Or do you just like it so much now you're going to keep claiming it even when it isn't yours to take?" She swears and half turns, hands lifting in a helpless gesture. "Shit, _we_ did this. You came back already wanting to help, prepared to _die_ to help, and all this town did was shove guilt in your face from day one." She was the worst of everyone, but Nathan assumes he can take that as read.

"You didn't do this." It comes out with something like disdain. She has it the wrong way around. This isn't the consequence of the weeks he's been back. _This_ was the product of his winter, of months alone, hated, friendless and knowing he did it to _himself_ , that let him start to get a kick out of being brutalized for money. Jordan doesn't know about that. He'd _wanted_ to help when the meteors were still falling, but they'd chased him out of town with murderous intent. The Guard could have stopped this back then, but his crimes were too raw to reasonably expect them to stop. Jordan was unconscious in a hospital bed.

 _This_ he did to himself. Some reactions can't be predicted.

She grabs his hand. He's not expecting it, and she moves too fast for him to evade her. Her hand is cold. "You did not _cause_ Sunday night," she says, fiercely. "You did not _deserve_ Sunday night. And I will tear into anyone who suggests that you did." She lets him go and steps back.

Was that a pep talk? Is Nathan supposed to say "thanks"?

He can't wave rape counselling clichés at this problem and make it _go away_. Since he can't say that to her, he runs with the option of being too stunned to say anything. He thinks it was Jordan's bright idea to do this, and she harried Dwight, who caved and went along. Or else she over-interpreted some comment of Dwight's and is here on her own initiative.

Nathan makes some confused so-what-now? type of gesture as the silence drags overlong.

"I sure as hell hope Crocker feels guilty, too," Jordan caps it with, "because he _should_ , William or no William."

"Of course he does!" Nathan explodes. What do they think Duke _is?_ Jordan -- he cannot expect Jordan to be objective, and he needs to remember that, not shout at her and piss her off all over again. Although 'shouting' is overstating the matter, since what small increase in volume his voice managed leaves him gasping. "Duke isn't like the man who triggered your Trouble."

"Everyone always says they're not _like_ that."

Nathan doesn't want to have this conversation at all. Jordan is locked into the horror of what happened to her and always will be. _Nathan_ was never an innocent victim. Jordan of all people should know it.

Maybe it's just her peculiar way to absolve him. He doesn't want it under those terms. And _yet_.

Keeping his mouth shut is not generally a difficult option. The world moves around him and leaves him, usually, with little of consequence to say. Right now, it's become a necessity.

"At least one good thing came out of it," Jordan says, her brows starting to furrow, confused by his failure to respond to her olive branch. "At least you got to lose your curse, too."

It says something about her, about _them_ , that his first reaction has to be an astonished double-take. Jordan, of all people, isn't going to hold it against him that he came out of this un-Troubled, when so many others remain Troubled, possibly forever, because of him.

Nathan has to turn quickly before she can see his face. Considering the condition of his neck, it isn't difficult to keep it fixed and straight front, not looking back as he heads across the rocks to his car.

***

Nathan is not especially careful driving back from the shore. Apparently he's been shattered so visibly that even Jordan desperately wants to be kind to him despite their history, that Duke no longer believes they can be equal partners in the bedroom, that Dwight would rather he be safely installed behind a desk.

At least Gloria only treats his injuries, with ample doses of sarcasm and sour faces as she asks, "Are you and Duke still trying to work your way through the _Kama Sutra_ with your ribs strapped up like this?"

There's a Nathan who once upon a time would have been horribly embarrassed, but as things are, she's talking about him and Duke like they're a regular couple and not screaming, "Away! Away!", so it lifts him out of his bleak mood a little. Especially when her words draw him back to where Duke has declared his interest in going next on their sexual adventures... before Nathan learned it was all a guilt-driven ploy. He wonders if he should tell Gloria as comeback, but it turns out the smile lurking on the edge of his lips is enough. She steps back from him as if physically rocked.

"Little Nathan Wuornos, you dirty boy." She swats at his shoulder. "--No. No more information." She holds her hands up and steps back, gesturing for Nathan to put his shirt back on. He does, feeding his left arm through the sleeve gingerly first. "Just try to make sure he's the one doing the bulk of the workload, okay?"

Nathan snorts. "That's what he says."

"I _said_ no more--" She stops, the other end of his shirt hanging from her fingers, and really looks at him, narrowing her eyes and screwing her face up in that frightening-as-all-hell way. "Nathan," she says crisply, "If there's one thing I know, it's take advantage of any man putting himself out for you while it lasts. It ain't _gonna_ last. I imagine that goes for even men with men... goes double, probably." She echoes back his snort, but her frown twitches at him, deepening her lines.

...And now he's hearing relationship advice from Gloria. "It's guilt," he tells her, drawn in despite himself, frustration all over his voice.

"Proves he's human," she responds acerbically. "And if he didn't feel guilty, you'd have a whole parade of us dragging you away from him."

Nathan assumes she's talking about Haven PD.

"Of course," and her tones descend into direst disapproval, "you being a big, strong man and all, I'm sure there's all _that_ shit to get in the way."

"I'm hardly like..."

She raises her eyebrows on his incredulous stare. Nathan scowls. He drags the rest of his shirt back from her, and struggles with it. She starts packing gauze and tape away. "Fine, you take the difficult route." She says it like it proves her point.

"At least you don't think that I should be running in the other direction," he mutters, trying to fasten his collar one-handed. He's been wearing them loose, but not so loose he flashes chest.

"Shit happens," is Gloria's evaluation. "The Troubles cause a _lot_ of shit to happen. Love gets shit on just like everything else. Much respect to both of you if you can move on and get past that." Nathan blinks at this dizzyingly freeing perspective, until she adds, ruining it, "Just makes me wonder where the gal fits in. Or was that you stroking her hair and cooing in a platonic sort of way, the other day?"

 _Now_ she's judging him.

"...I don't know," Nathan admits.

Gloria slaps another card of pills into his hands. "Two more days. We might be okay on the anti-inflammatories now, but I wouldn't want to risk it much short of a week. Done some reading up. Funny things, 'bout two dozen case studies in existence. Most of 'em were all but knitted in a few weeks. You got plenty of other soft tissue damage in there besides, though. Lucky your windpipe wasn't crushed. Dumb sonuvabitch should've known better than to try strangulation."

As far as Nathan could figure, Duke had changed his mind almost instantly. He shrugs -- a tip of one shoulder, since it's not particularly easy to do both. He resists comment on the rest, since Gloria doesn't default to Jordan and Dwight's stance, and that in itself is something he's grateful for.

"Nathan," she barks as he's turning away, and waits until she has his full attention to continue. "Injuries are funny. _Pain_ is funny -- hell, especially for someone in your shoes, I'm guessin'. You'll find yourself thinking things, ready to act on things, that you might not normally. Up to you to decide whether that's a poor time to be making crucial life decisions."

He tips his head resignedly, since it's still not yet up to him shaking it. "World's not going to give me time." Sighs. "I should look in on William."

She makes a noncommittal noise, like she's about to say something more, but cuts it off to urgently grunt, "No funny stuff!" as he makes for the storeroom. There's a lock on that door, for all the good it will do if William wakes up unannounced, but better than nothing. Hopefully it provides enough time for Gloria to run. But she'd complained loudly, before, that nobody expects him to just break out of a sedative. ("Besides," she'd added. "I've got a gun and if he's coming after me, Little Miss Do-It or whoever she is these days can make her own luck.") "He may be a dick," Gloria continues, in the now, "But he's a dick in my care. Though I can't swear not to have stuck a few pins in him when no-one was looking, after that stunt with my grandson." Her eyes are shiny with moisture, just for a moment. She wasn't joking. Nathan wonders if Audrey felt the pins in her sleep, but he's pretty sure she'd not begrudge Gloria the satisfaction.

When he stands over William this time, the overpowering rage of before doesn't come. Even though he expected it, braced for it. Anger twists up and becomes lost in the theory that William punished them because of what they did to Audrey. Nathan will never believe they deserved _that_ , but passion and rage, the urge to avenge and protect, those at least he can understand. It's the only thing that makes him think maybe there's more to William than his grinning facade.

Audrey's grievance is real. It follows that so is William's.

He watches William with the close, concerned regard he'd give a sleeping tiger, only to be startled when the man on the gurney bucks and shifts.

"Oh, yeah," Gloria says caustically, behind him. Watching, this time. "Your boy's been dancing a fandango in his sleep since last night."

Nathan turns around to her, dismayed.

"Yup, looks like he's coming out of it. I haven't reduced the dosages, damned if I haven't already upped 'em as far as I dared, and told Rudy to do the same, but he's still coming out of it. Won't hold more than another day." She heaves a sigh and bunches her fists on her hips. "Might be the best thing if we set a time and pick the place -- jail cell would be good -- and pull him out, rather than try to push for more time and open the way for the bastard to surprise us."

"That might be best," Nathan agrees, but his lips feel like they've returned to numbness, and it's spreading downwards. He thought he felt better today, but he abruptly feels the need to sit down. The edge of the lab bench behind him is nearest. Gloria dives to his side and makes a grab for his shoulder. He's holding his own weight, but she doesn't move her hand.

"God _damn_ , kid."

"I'll..." For some reason, he finds himself trying to pretend it didn't happen. He drags his thoughts to the practicalities and tries to zero in on those alone. "I'll talk to... Dwight. Will tomorrow morning be too long to wait?"

"No." She's frowning at him, uncertain. "No, that should be about right."

He feels something loosen a little in his chest. His breathing gets better and some of the restriction disappears. Pain in response to the way he tensed up replaces the numbness. Tomorrow isn't ideal. But it's better. They had time -- Audrey put herself out to buy them time to fix Haven, he reminds himself, not for Nathan to fix himself, and not for him to fix Duke. They've made use of the time they had as they were meant to: the town is stable, no longer a disaster zone, no longer falling apart at the seams. It isn't _good_ , but at least they stand a chance.

Nathan isn't ready.

"Oh, hon, it's not that bad," Gloria says, rubbing his shoulder, rocking his balance with her hearty compassion. "At least he's cuffed and in custody... although granted, past example suggests he'll have tricks we haven't seen yet to get _out_ of it."

It's not that, though. Or that's only a small part of it.

It isn't William whose awakening fills Nathan with dread.

It's _Audrey._

***

Time is falling away from him. He had three days. He feels like he's been too sick most of the time to do anything with them. He went to _work_. Duke went to work, separately. Although when they started out, he wanted Duke at work with him, and much of the last few weeks... well... he cannot deny that now, the _Gull_ is the best and only place that he wants Duke to be. Away from the Troubles, back in the world of normality, away from Nathan's work.

As much as is possible, considering they're in Haven.

He wants to ditch work the rest of the day, go to the _Gull_ and drag Duke off home to have his way with him... perhaps more vice-versa... but this morning did not go well, and there's a lot to be said for time and distance.

One night might still be time enough. Nathan hopes, he _hopes._

Given how, in retrospect, he is aware that he almost killed himself twice on the way from the beach to the morgue, he makes himself take the journey slower, this time.

He parks on the street outside the station, as near as he can get, which isn't very near, today. The streets are busy. It's almost lunchtime. The wind has picked up since he was at the shore, and it's colder. Nathan isn't really used to dressing more than generally for the temperature, and shivers inside his too-light jacket. A couple of friendly faces say hello as he passes, and less friendly ones give him hard stares or avert their heads. He speeds up to get to the steps without having to risk meeting the eye of a man he knows is Guard.

The police station is more-or-less a refuge. Nathan gets a bad coffee and goes to his office.

Jennifer Mason is waiting there.

Her back faces him as he comes through the door. She's wearing a bright, girlish dress that flares out below the knees, patterned with red flowers, and tiny red shoes are on her feet. The fashion aesthetic aside, her dark hair is too short to be deja-vu for all the times Jordan ambushed him there. He hasn't seen enough of her recently that he's completely sure who it is until she turns around.

"Nathan!" she starts breathlessly. "I wanted to talk to you." Her eyes scan him over and her head ducks, lips pressing together with startled affront. "I didn't realise you were hurt so badly in the earthquakes."

"It wasn't the earthquakes," Nathan says, puzzled. She is enough in their inner circle that he'd thought she knew the real story... then again, most of her information in the past has been delivered to her via Duke or... Lexie.

And then he knows what she's here to talk about. He groans and holds his forehead. He didn't think about it until this moment, but it's obvious. "You, too?"

She shuts her mouth on the verge of launching off, then opens it again. "Excuse me? I'm here about Duke, who _hasn't_ lost his phone so far as I know, and works right beneath where I'm living, so he _really_ shouldn't be this hard to get hold of." She offers a nervy little laugh.

Nathan has always had the impression Jennifer regards him with caution: as an unstable, dangerous influence on Duke, perhaps... and, well, he can't really argue with cause and effect there. She keeps a notable perimeter around her body when she talks to him. Maybe it's the nature of their introduction, when he was playing the role of a bearded, smelly punchbag. Maybe it's because he's never been that much _in_ control around her, the times she had answers and he raised his voice. Whatever it is, the result of it is that she doesn't tend to seek him out.

Since Nathan has had the feeling for a while that Duke talks about him, and about their relationship, during buddy chats with Jen in the bar, he hasn't really ever felt inclined to seek her company out, either.

They regard each other with faint distrust. Nathan walks a wide path around her and pulls out the chair in front of his desk with his right hand. He pulls it slightly off to the side, so he won't be facing her across the desk itself, over a sign that says _Detective_. Then he yanks his own chair around sideways. It's heavier, more of a struggle one-handed and weakened, and he gives up and sinks down with one knee either side of a table leg.

"Sit." She's still looking at the chair he got for her with distrust. "I need to tell you some things."

She would have been told by Duke or Lexie, he thinks. Lexie never went home, that day, and Duke...

"Is this about Lexie?" Jen says uncertainly. "She's all right, isn't she? Is she going to wake up soon?" She smoothes her dress against her legs as she sits.

So she knows that much, and Nathan guesses that's down to Dwight. "Yes, but that's not why..."

" _Wait_." Jennifer holds up her hands. "I came here about Duke, so just so you know, first. I keep hearing that Duke is back, Duke is better, Duke is working in his bar... But every time _I_ go to look him up, he's mysteriously somewhere else. There is a limit how many times one person can be in the bathroom in the course of a day! So just tell me what the hell is going on? Because I didn't agree to stay in this town to be... ignored, or avoided... or whatever the hell it _is_ that's happening here!"

Nathan tries, "Duke's not well..."

"I know that! There was the crazy week, which, okay... I don't feel like I can hold that against him, and buddy, you did not come out of that great, either." She jabs a finger toward him. "But you're here and back at work, and so was Duke supposed to be, and _you_ actually do seem... less scary."

Nathan genuinely feels like he and Jennifer are on two incompatible wavelengths, unable to connect. "I'm sorry. I didn't realise you'd been... left in the cold. Aud-- Lexie's asleep, to keep William asleep." He looks for confirmation of knowledge in her eyes. "She'll probably wake up soon." He doesn't want to get specific, when he hasn't even relayed Gloria's news to Dwight yet. Jennifer brightens slightly, not understanding all the implications. "There's no easy way to tell the rest of this..."

But tell it, Nathan does. Skims over the essence of that terrible night -- he went after Duke, Duke lost control, injured him, used the Crocker Curse and that's why Nathan's Trouble is gone -- and their efforts since. "I only found out yesterday, from Dwight, that Duke's been avoiding Troubled people at all. So it's not _you_ , you see..."

"I see," she says, a bit crisply.

"I guess I've had a lot on my mind." Nathan looks down at his hands, curled together in his lap. "And I'm not -- my blood doesn't set Duke off anymore, so he's safe around me. I just never... thought."

"It's not possible to think of everything," she offers him with a squashed smile. "With all of this going on, I don't feel right about making a fuss. It's just... he's the one who persuaded me to stay here, you know? I hate when people get you involved in something and then just _drop_ you, and it... I once had this friend who really wanted to take cookery classes, and-- Never mind." She shakes her head and waggles her hand as if to erase the meander. "It sounds like what Duke needs is some kind of intervention. I mean, he's still Duke. He wouldn't hurt me. Not when William isn't twisting his thoughts." She shudders, from either a good imagination or the memories of that week. "I'm really glad to learn that was really William, by the way."

Nathan nods. "Dwight and I, we're going to try to talk to Duke today. Would you be prepared to be involved in that?" He's not sure Jennifer being there is the best thing, but on the other hand, she's close to Duke and brings out his protective instincts, and is a better subject by far than Dwight, with whom Duke's relationship has always had a slightly combative edge. If there's a Troubled person to ease Duke back into confidence gently, then that's Jen.

She answers his question with a brisk, repeating nod that goes on long enough to make it start to look like perpetual motion, like she's a nodding dog. Nathan resists the urge to reach out his hand to hold the top of her head still and tell her that's enough.

He eyes the clock on the wall. It's lunchtime. He can expect Duke here, soup offering in hand, soon. He'll ring his spies on Duke's staff to make sure. He _had_ better, though, first go and clear things with Dwight. He stands up, gulps the last of his chilling coffee, and says to Jennifer, "Can you stay here a moment?"

She follows him anyway. He _forgets_ that she's a reporter. She's so... essentially sweet-natured. But she still has that skill to insert herself into things whether you want her there or not.

Dwight in his office is actually an unusual sight this week. Nathan taps cursorily against the side of the door before he goes in. Jennifer's head is practically pushing under his arm.

Nathan gets as far as opening his mouth and saying, "About Duke. We need to--" Then his phone rings.

He almost forges on and ignores it, lets it go to voicemail -- whatever it is can be dealt with later, and surely with everything else that's around him he can let himself focus on one thing at a time. But when he picks it out of his pocket to silence the tone, he sees the call is from Tracey.

Peculiar, he thinks, hung up for a moment on the fact he was planning to call her. But at that point, he's definitely not leaving it. He casts Dwight and Jen looks of apology and lifts the phone to his ear. "Wuornos."

On the other end of the line, Tracey is panicked, gibbering words that fall over themselves to strike Nathan's ears. "Oh my God. Thank God. Nathan, you need to get here! There was a fish monster! A real monster! And Duke, he-- Nathan, he's freaking out. We need you here _now._ Please tell me you'll come!"

"I'll be there." Nathan can feel his throat tightening up. Is he due more pills? Should he have taken them with his coffee? "Tell Duke I'll be there." He can be at the _Gull_ in less than ten minutes, if he doesn't pass out. He's running out of the door as he lowers the phone in his hand.

As he's charging down the police station steps, he realises Dwight and Jennifer are on his tail.

***

They take Dwight's SUV because it's closer and because, when it comes down to it, Nathan has more confidence that Dwight can drive them faster and safer than he can at the moment. Although Nathan doesn't feel very safe as the landscape shoots by.

The _Gull_ is a scene of disarray. Tables and chairs are upturned. There's a trail of seaweed scraps and water leading out of the door onto the decking. It takes Nathan a moment to realise that it's leading from a body in the centre of the floor, half obscured by an upturned table. Nathan curses and takes several long, quick steps to drop at the body's side. It's not Duke. He can't see Duke. Two of his bar staff are huddling behind the counter and by the doorway Nathan just came in. Did they already clear the customers out?

Nathan could theoretically feel a pulse now, but finds it impossible to focus down to so narrow a touch with so many other calls on his attention. Namely, if the man on the floor is _not_ Duke -- and Dwight drops down and drags him over onto his back to reveal a bullet wound and a familiar face -- then where _is_ Duke?

Tracey points from the doorway, and Nathan follows her gesture to the door onto the decking with its trail of water. Drawing the unfamiliar gun, fingers fumbling at shapes in the wrong places and usually unfelt, Nathan follows the watery trail outside.

The trail terminates at the edge of the safety rail. Duke's wedged behind a table nearby with his knees drawn up. Nathan holsters his gun and goes to him. "Duke! What happened? Look at me, damn it!" he tries to get his hands either side of Duke's face to draw his head up, check his eyes, though whether he's looking for silver or sanity or just normal signs of trauma he isn't sure. Duke fights him, trying to curl up tighter.

Nathan can hear Dwight asking urgent questions of the _Gull's_ staff. "Who is this? Where did he come from?"

"It's Cole Glendower," Nathan says, distractedly. Duke's face is clammy with sweat against his palms, and slips back down when Nathan tries to lift it. He catches Duke's knee and shoulder instead, tries to put his arms around him after _some_ fashion, to rub away some of the cold that he can feel. Duke's been outside for ten minutes like this? The tide's coming in and he's not sure if the dampness in the air is spray or drizzle.

Dwight curses and scrambles urgently after something, and it's only when Nathan hears him on the phone that he makes the relevant obvious connections: " _You need to get over there and get those people out of those water tanks, now!"_

Nathan's stomach turns over horribly, but he remembers... "There's air in the tanks. A few inches at the top, at least." He can't remember if they're air-tight. But it's got to be enough for ten minutes, hasn't it? It's got to be enough that their ignorance hasn't just slaughtered the whole clan?

He shakes Duke. "Come _on_ , snap out of it!"

"Get away from me, Nathan!"

Words are progress, even those. He fights against Duke's hands as they try to push him away. His shoulder bashes against the table Duke was trying to crouch beneath and he shoves it clear, annoyed. He straddles Duke and thinks about punching him back as a flailing arm jars his neck, but Duke didn't mean to do that, and that's _not_ how you're supposed to treat traumatized... victims? Suspects?

Once upon a time, he'd have done it anyway.

Gritting his teeth and clenching his left arm low into the fabric of Duke's shirt, he draws back his right arm a short way and delivers the punch. He hears the little gasp from behind him and realises Jennifer's still there. No matter. He hauls Duke up from his corner, not much easier to move now he's gone limp. "Help me with him."

Jen grabs his other side and they manoeuvre him back into the main part of the restaurant between them, finding a low, comfortable chair to put him in. By that time, Duke's shaking his head and blinking. Trembling hands rise to his face to wipe at the blood on his mouth. "You _hit_ me."

"Yes," growls Nathan.

Duke jerks away from the side of the chair where Jennifer is, leaning toward Nathan. "She can't be here. Nathan, are you crazy?! I can't--"

"He's _not_ crazy," Jen snaps, taking umbrage at the casual insult that means a hell of a lot more to her. "But _you_ need to stop acting like it. I'm right here, now, so how about you explain why you've been avoiding me?"

Dwight is getting the story out of Tracey. "The dead man... he _wasn't_ , when he -- wasn't a man, I mean. He was a monster! He climbed up the rail and came in. Duke grabbed the gun from behind the bar, but... when he shot the monster, it turned _into_ a man..."

How the hell Duke's curse knows what to do if he kills someone from a distance is just another of those only-the-Troubles questions.

"He used the Crocker Legacy again?" Dwight asks, somewhat redundantly, although other implications in his voice are anything but redundant.

"He'll be fine," Nathan says. "Duke, you're _not_ crazy. You cured the Glendowers. Jen and Dwight are here and you're not mindlessly out for their blood. _William_ made that happen. _You_ are in control."

Duke lunges forward in his chair and grabs Nathan around the waist, causing most of the air to leave him in an _oof._ "Get them out of here," he begs, face pushed into Nathan's abdomen.

"I don't need to." All the same, Nathan wonders if he _should_ , because he hadn't planned to do it this way, no-one had, piling the stress on. But when he looks at Dwight and Jennifer, their faces are sympathetic, not afraid. They do not feel threatened by Duke, and last week, they would have. Nathan turns to Tracey. "Get him a drink."

She hesitates. "A _drink_? Or a coffee?"

"Both." Balancing is getting difficult with Duke clamped to him like this, and if that grip grows any tighter, Nathan might just have to hit him again. Dwight moves forward to try peel Duke's hands off, but Duke anticipates him and shoots back away from Nathan like Dwight's touch might infect him with something. Nathan unsteadily grabs a stool and drags it forward, perches on it, almost between Duke's sprawling legs. He probably should get a drink himself -- coffee -- and take his pills with it.

"Duke?" Dwight says hesitantly, stepping away. "I'm not going to touch you, but I'm going to be right here. I'll be over by that wall. You can cope with me being as far away as that wall." He looks askance at Nathan, who nods, then goes.

"We're your friends, Duke," Jen says, as Nathan waves for her to back off. "Please don't be afraid of us. We want to help!"

"Rest of the clientele gone?" Nathan asks Tracey.

She nods. "Lucky it was a quiet morning."

"Okay." Nathan takes a deep breath. "This is what we're going to do. We're all going to sit down and have a drink, maybe something to eat, and just get used to each other's company again."

Duke groans.

"I am perfectly capable of hitting you again -- or _shooting_ you -- if you try anything," Nathan asserts darkly. "Everyone is very, very safe. Or we would not be doing this." His patience is running down. "Damn it, Duke, everyone here trusts you except _you_." And they will wait as long as they need to prove it.

It takes an hour and a half, during which Nathan takes his pills and drinks his lunch. In that time, Duke gradually uncurls and starts looking at the world straight again. By the end of the exercise, he's still keeping a few feet between himself and Dwight and Jennifer at all times. He's still avoiding contact. But being able to be in the same room and initiate a conversation? Is _definitely_ a start.

***

Nathan has to wonder if, in moments of lucidity, Cole Glendower's thoughts were on things not too far from what he and Dwight had spoken about. He was the head of his clan, an aging man whose life after the Troubles would be spent almost exclusively in prison. He presumably knew what Duke could do and where Duke could be found... right next to the ocean, in either location. It seems to Nathan that it's too much coincidence for him to be at the _Gull_ if he wasn't seeking out the Crocker Curse.

Toward the end of their intervention, Dwight quietly had the body removed and Tracey mopped the sea water and blood from the floor.

"I _hate_ the sacrifice play," Duke sighs, sagging down further into his chair. He's relaxing again, really relaxing now that Nathan's sent Jennifer and Dwight away.

"Better to think that it's what he wanted." Nathan's phone chirps and he looks at it: text from Dwight. _Fourteen Glendowers retrieved from aquarium storage safe and sound._ Nathan can only hope that the rest of them weren't too far out at sea. He assumes that from their family's crazy training they can all swim like fish even if they're no longer... like fish. He relays the message to Duke. He decides he never needs to tell Duke they had contemplated using Wade to achieve the same effect.

"Saved his family," Duke mutters, and nods. "Okay, I'll tell myself that story. I guess there was room for one more, after all."

Nathan puts his hand on Duke's knee and gives it a comforting rub. "I'll try to ensure he's the last. You don't have to answer any call to arms or ride in to destroy Troubles. Not at the risk of losing you to Wade's madness. Dwight understands." And if he doesn't, he will.

"Thanks, Nathan." Duke touches his arm, sliding the back of his fingers over Nathan's wrist, up over his sleeve to the elbow, where he curls his fingers around and lets warmth infuse through the fabric. "Look, this morning, I wasn't trying to... trick you, or _pity_ you. Seriously. We have different options now. I just want to... expand our horizons."

"And I don't want to give up on the idea of penetrative sex before I've actually _felt it_ ," Nathan retorts sourly... But he's _not_ doing this now. He silences Duke's protest with a severe look and a raised finger. That's not what right now needs to be about. "You should have _told me_ you were having problems."

Duke stares at him. "You had enough to worry about."

"I worry about you. And Dwight was--" He wonders how much he should really relate of what Dwight thought, and settles for, "Also concerned."

Duke starts to say something that he decides against, too, and shakes his head instead. "I didn't want to put any more pressure on you. You're helping hold Haven together. I'm -- showing up to work in a restaurant." He groans and screws up his face. "I hate how I'm the 1950s wife in that equation."

Nathan's grin probably shows a little too much amusement and teeth.

Duke crooks his head and narrows his eyes. "Perish that thought, Nathan."

Nathan stands up. The hand on his elbow slowly trails down his arm as he rises, the grasp of their outstretched fingers falling apart last. "Are you going to re-open again today? Or do you want me to take you home?"

"Tracey and Naomi can run the evening shift. Did it well enough the week I was off the grid." Duke pulls a face. "Way too much fresh prepared ingredients sitting in the kitchen to give up on the day now. Plus, your dinner for tonight. Pea and ham broth, in case you were wondering." He frowns. "Maybe I'll take some of that back to finish at home." He pauses. "Yours?"

"The _Cape Rouge_ ," Nathan says, positively.

"Okay..." There's a question in there, but Nathan's not prepared to clarify, or argue. " _Okay_ ," Duke says again, emphasizing the word with rather more resignation. "The _Cape Rouge_ it is. I don't suppose we can swing by yours to pick up my book?"

That's the Tantric Yoga book, Nathan assumes. He rolls his eyes and nods. "Come on."

Duke nips out onto the deck to talk to his staff, and the wonder really is that they've waiting around this long, outside under the overhang. He comes back claiming he's promised them big bonuses, both women trailing in his wake. Tracey's still smoking the end of a cigarette.

"No more sea monsters, at least," Nathan offers with a nod of acknowledgement as Naomi goes to the bar and Duke and Tracey come to him, she walking past to re-open the door.

"Please don't try to pep talk my staff," Duke begs.

They exit into a glittery after-rain sunlight, moisture sparkling off wooden beams, gravel and parked cars. The Bronco is still at the police station. Duke fishes out the keys to his truck but holds them dubiously away when Nathan reaches for them. "I can probably drive."

What he means is that everything's on the left hand side so he thinks Nathan can't. Nathan grabs the keys. "Controls on the left are low down. Should be easier than trying to keep my left hand on the wheel to shift gear with my right in the Bronco. I was planning to steal your truck anyway."

Duke gives him a distrustful look but admits, "I suppose you have a pretty good record with cars."

Nathan doesn't understand what Duke sees in the clunky foreign truck, but it is easier to manoeuvre with the limitations on his movements. "I can't stick around just yet," he warns Duke as he carefully guides them out of the parking lot, taking it slowly for the unfamiliar controls. "Need to talk to Dwight about Audrey and William." Ashes in his mouth at the reminder. He swallows, but just ends up spreading the taste. "Looks like our time-out ends tomorrow." He describes what Gloria said.

"I want to be there," Duke asserts, as they're pulling up in front of Nathan's home.

Nathan gives his reduced nod, then adds, "Yes," unsure if Duke caught the small movement. "William or Audrey?" he asks, realising a beat later. They have to keep them separated. That means _he_ has to choose, too.

"William," Duke instantly says.

"You can't kill him without killing Audrey," Nathan reminds him.

Duke goes quiet, then tightly grunts, "I know that." He heaves a sigh. "I wouldn't... I don't _want to_... Too much of it is killing." He scrubs his hands through his hair. "I just want to punch that fucker in the face. Say a dozen times."

"Don't do that, either," Nathan says. The engine vibrates to a standstill. He leans forward over the wheel and looks at Duke. "Do you want to take Audrey? Maybe... one of us should be there, and you haven't had chance to even visit her since we... learned."

Duke rubs his hands over his face, muffling his reply of, "Maybe that's best."

"Then if Dwight and Jordan and I take William and you... and Jen... go to Lucassi for Audrey?" Nathan almost holds his breath.

"Okay." Intonation enough in that to get across that Duke knows what he's playing at, even before he turns and pins him in a flat stare. "Avoiding much, Nathan?"

"Doesn't matter." Nathan shoves the door open to get out, so they can collect what they need to drop Duke back at the _Rouge_. "Dwight, Jordan and I would still need to take William."

***

Dwight is back in the station and plans seem to be in motion. Gloria and Dwight and Lucassi have liaised with each other already, and there's not a whole lot for Nathan to do. "9AM," Dwight says. "Or should we call it 9.30AM, since you've been late to work every day for the last three days?" His eyebrows raise.

"I--" Nathan stammers. "Sorry. Nine's good."

"No, I'm sorry," Dwight amends quickly, revealing that was meant to be a gentler humour that the reproval Nathan took it for. "Look... come with me." There is something very odd in Dwight's expression and Nathan doesn't quite trust what's about to happen as he's guided into Dwight's office by a big, warm hand closing over his shoulder.

He stands in the centre of the room, not failing to notice how very securely Dwight locks and checks the door, and draws the one set of blinds that's not shut already. "Am I getting fired?"

Maybe there are worlds in which that would be a _funny_ joke. The Guard's deal is that if he doesn't work he dies, so 'fired' has its own special meaning. But maybe Anna Benedict really did soften them for him. Nathan forces his face into a grim smile of apology.

"Sit down," Dwight says, and sits behind his own desk, folding himself into his chair, pulling it closer to the desk so his upper body looms bulkily.

Nathan silently pulls the visitor's chair up one-handed and sits, too. He folds his hands on the desk. "What is this?"

Dwight says, matter of fact and face curiously blank, like he's making himself put the words out there for Nathan to hear, "It's a confession. When I pulled you out of that hospital room four days ago, I thought it was already over. Duke brought you back looking dead. With the story the physician told me from your injuries, the pain you were in when they put you out, your Trouble gone..." That anyone other than Duke bore witness to that is news to Nathan, who doesn't remember arriving in the hospital conscious, and would probably rather have stayed ignorant. Dwight looks away uncomfortably. "When the Guard started demanding where you were, I almost told them to go fuck themselves. But then, it didn't seem like it was going to make much difference -- between wheeling you out into the middle of a disaster zone and having the Guard charge in to murder you in a hospital bed. Add to that, the past week you'd been... barely short of deranged." He raises a stalling hand. "We know that was William's doing, now. So. I picked you up and pulled you out to the front lines anyway. Not something I'm proud of.

"I sure as _hell_ didn't expect to get knocked out and be told later how you and Jordan pulled the situation back from the brink." Dwight grimaces. "Didn't particularly expect you'd keep reporting dutifully in for work for the next three days."

Nathan stares at him. 

"I don't know how it happened, but you've got more life back in you in these last few days than I've seen since everything ended so badly last year. When I saw you with Duke today, that was _real_. I know I was on your case... but I've never been more glad to be wrong, Nathan." He holds out his hand. "I didn't want it to feel like I'd been so hard on you, these past few days, and not have you hear that."

Nathan accepts Dwight's hand because he's gone too numb to muster resistance. It's big and warm, oddly gentle engulfing his own hand. Dwight shakes once and lets go.

"I don't understand," Nathan says breathily, his throat playing up again. "This... some _pep talk_ before the big game...? All of this was _my fault_ to begin with." Dwight is as misguided, as oblivious as Jordan. "If I'm alive again, it's because my Trouble's gone, and God knows, I don't deserve that. I--"

" _Shush_." Dwight presses his hand down over Nathan's on the table, aborting his attempt to rise, since he can't easily lean down. "We could be in combat again tomorrow. You understand? If you want to win, you tell your people they're good." He pins Nathan's eyes, and won't let go until Nathan gives the barest hint of a nod of acknowledgement. "You help me carry this town. You and Duke risked everything trying to fight the Troubles. You're already dealing with the consequences. Tomorrow, it could begin again. It could get worse. We need you to keep trying to help make that difference. You _are_ important to this town, and this is... no longer a _threat_." Dwight's eyes are peculiarly soft. "You would have done it without the deal."

"I would have done it without the deal," Nathan parrots. "I told you, all of this is _my fault."_

"The problem with that approach is finding the place where you decide it's time to stop paying."

"It's irrelevant if William kills us all tomorrow." Nathan forces a grim smile.

He gets a grunted acknowledgement, for that.

"You've been a better Chief than I ever was," Nathan says, feeling he needs to return something. Then, thinking that seems faint praise -- better than the man who condemned a town to lifetimes of Troubles -- "You've been a good Chief."

"Thanks," Dwight says wryly.

"Any last pre-battle advice?" Nathan asks, laying on the irony, although he isn't necessarily being facetious. Dwight _is_ the one of them who has actually been to war.

"Go home to Duke," the big guy replies, "and make the most of it."

***

Duke is sitting cross-legged on top of his couch in boxers. Around him, the _Cape Rouge_ is a lot tidier than Nathan last remembers it being. Two weeks of descent into madness don't make for an immaculate living environment. Maybe Duke did have other reasons for agreeing to stay at Nathan's house than humouring or pitying him.

"You did housework?" Nathan asks incredulously. His voice scrapes. Duke doesn't move. Meditation. Right. Nathan crosses the galley and makes himself a coffee. Then he sits with his coffee, flicking through Duke's Tantric Yoga book. Mostly it's just two bodies doing yoga instead of one, but it has a section at the end with specifically sexual positions. It has diagrams and photographs. In one of the earlier positions, the only parts of the couple touching are the soles of their feet. Nathan snorts and puts the book aside, turns and sips his coffee while he watches Duke do nothing.

"Someone had to do it," Duke answers eventually. It takes a moment to recall what he's answering. Duke's eyes slide open and he uncurls.

"Enjoy that?" Nathan asks sarcastically.

"You have no idea. No, you really don't. It's sad."

Nathan had meant to come home and launch into romancing Duke, for what could be their last night together, for what might be the last chance he gets to unravel this. To figure out what he wants, what's left for them, what they can _do_ now. If they come back from this or fizzle out. He got stalled by Duke's weird hobby, and he doesn't really mean to pick holes in Duke's weird hobby -- especially if it helps him to cope -- but it's kind of hard not to hold things against it. "Are you awake enough now for me to kiss you?"

"I wasn't _asleep_... Never mind." Duke stands, shaking his head, and steps into Nathan's space. He leans over Nathan's seated position on the sofa -- Nathan's heart _thumps_ a bit harder, faster, at associated recall, but he successfully hides it -- and lowers his head until their lips meet, trying to do all the angling so Nathan doesn't have to. "Coffee." He licks his lips and starts to pull back. Nathan puts both arms around his neck and slides up with him, ignoring the scream of pain from his ribs at the stretch, inserting a knee between Duke's knees and going in for the kiss again from standing. It's hard to focus on the kiss for the pain, but he must manage it.

"Mmm... You," Duke's lips smack back into shorter kisses between his bursts of words, "must be feeling... better."

"I do feel better." Nathan's body evidently hates him, but he shoves the complaints aside. "Come to bed." He walks Duke backwards, still holding on tightly, trying to let established patterns and muscle memory take over and block out the pain. If he can give Duke the Nathan he's always known... maybe Duke won't flinch. Nathan refuses _not_ to do this, when he's no longer Troubled and they finally can, and he doesn't know what lies around the corner.

Muscle memory serves... Duke's hands slide down to cup Nathan's ass, awakening fading bruises shaped to match the current grip. Nathan exults at feeling both the touch and the pain. The latter is dangerous -- a rebellious, remnant spark -- but it can help him here. Being held feels good. Feels secure. Like Duke wants him again. He tries to push aside _feeling_ , tries not to let the sensations show. Not how much Duke can move him, and not how much Duke can hurt him.

His groin feels impossibly hot pressed against Duke's.

Nathan walks them both into the bedroom. Duke's cleaned there, too, and sprayed some scented spray around that tickles the back of the throat. This place was a cave when they came back that first night. They were just too exhausted to care about the things that Nathan notices now, in retrospect.

He pulls at Duke's underwear. His own clothes, it might be better to leave on, as much as possible. Bruises are reminders that will only get in the way. Duke's passive until his boxers are slid down as far as Nathan can reach, then he shuffles and steps out of them himself. His hands reach for Nathan's shirt, and Nathan stops him. "Not yet."

Nathan pulls them onto the bed, backwards, Duke on top.

There's a lightheaded moment when his injuries jar from the landing, but he pushes through it, his hands on Duke dragging him down for another kiss. His strained breathing, he hopes will be taken for arousal. Weight across his thighs is unfamiliar, and arousal is definitely there. It's an ambiguous, mixed up sort, but Duke doesn't need to know that. All he has to do is not panic at being pinned down, with Duke over him, heavy between his legs. In the distance, Nathan thinks he can hear the sound of waves breaking on rocks and sand and pebble shore. He keeps kissing Duke, who can't see his face if he's this close. Nathan can taste salt on Duke's skin. The kisses elicit less and less response. Because Nathan isn't used to feeling, it takes a while to register how wooden Duke's lips have become. But then, he's been able to feel them for three days. Denial is also a possibility.

After a few seconds more, he's forced to pull back and let go. From a distance of inches, Duke's discomfort is confirmed. Who knows what's revealed in Nathan's own face? Duke whispers, "What are you doing, Nathan?"

"I need to _know_ ," Nathan responds fiercely, holding on at cost in more pain as Duke tries to roll clear -- sees the pain and stops moving abruptly. "I need you to fuck me, like we did before." His voice shakes with rage and helplessness as it spills out. "You _did_ this to me, damn it. _You_ did this so we could stay together, so don't tell me you can't stand to be with me anymore."

Duke breathes in harshly. "You can't tell me that you wanted to keep your Trouble."

Nathan doesn't have an answer to that he's prepared to give. "I don't care if it hurts. I don't care if it's difficult. I want you, tonight." He challenges fiercely, "Draw my blood! _Prove_ that it doesn't _work_ any more. There's no danger. You remade me so that I'd be _safe_ with you...!" Bitterness soars in that. Even Nathan winces.

"This is what you _want_?" Duke starts to struggle out of his grasp again, then stops before Nathan's resistance can cause any real harm. "Jesus Christ, Nathan! This is what my nightmares are about, too!" Nathan blinks. "I've lain next to you, sometimes, these last few days, wide awake, not knowing how the hell _you_ can be sleeping, just thinking about... About walking out, taking the _Cape Rouge_ and never coming back, because that's the only way I can be sure I never hurt you again... _or_ anyone else."

" _No_ ," Nathan says savagely. "You can't. If you disappear..."

"Oh, come _on!_ " Duke's body jerks in his frustration, cascading a swift panic through Nathan via some hazy trigger buried in his memories. The inside of his head goes cold. Duke doesn't notice. "I _know_ that you're going to choose Audrey. It's... it's okay. You loved her first. She'll never hurt you. She's... safer. Of course you're going to choose her."

A tight, incoherent noise escapes the back of Nathan's throat. It takes everything in him not to fight, not to struggle. _Duke won't hurt him now..._ Trying to refocus on the nonsense coming from Duke's lips doesn't help much. "I'm _not_ \--" He stops. He still doesn't know what he's going to do.

There's an irrational sense that if he lets go of Duke now, he'll be letting go forever. Otherwise... Well, Duke is giving every indication he still _wants_ to roll clear.

"I get that you're trying to 'fix' this, in your own fashion, before you go. But some things can't be fixed, and the most romantic couple on Earth couldn't fix _this_ in three days." He adds sarcastically, "That's not us, in case you hadn't noticed."

"Then what _are_ we?" Nathan growls, breaking through whatever barrier's been stopping him. "I need to know! Where are we, _what's left?!"_ There's already enough stacked against him making a rational decision here, according to Gloria. "How am I supposed to know anything, choose anything, when we've been left like _this?!"_

Damn William. _Damn_ him. Nathan grinds up into Duke's naked groin, tries to lunge up to recapture him, ends up gasping as fire explodes in his ribs and neck. He flails to continue that motion anyway, and Duke gives in, grabbing on to steady him. Duke's eyes are still wide with shock at... what?

The thought that Nathan might choose him over Audrey?

Duke carefully places hands on his shoulder and lower back and holds him until he recovers his breath, making a joke out of the idea that Nathan was imagining he could muscle him into anything, in their comparative physical states. "Holy shit, Nate," he hisses, after a while. "Calm _down._ " He breathes. Nathan finds himself matching it, after a moment. As further time passes, Duke starts to nuzzle into his shoulder, and they work their way back to kissing again, softer, less like the world ends tomorrow, which doesn't add a great deal of clarity to the situation.

"Okay..." Duke eases the word out on his out-breath, very slow. Things have gone oddly calm. "What do you want, Nathan? Not tomorrow, not in the future, _tonight_. What do you want to do?"

Stubbornness kicks in. "I want you inside me. If it's our last chance... and that could be because William _kills us tomorrow_... I want to feel it."

Duke sighs. It's resigned, like he knew what he was getting into when he asked. "All right. But. How sore are you?"

"Almost good." Nathan hesitates, but he doesn't lie; his ass still hurts, and there's nothing he can do about that. If they do this, it's not going to be without a certain amount of discomfort.

Duke touches his face, curiously, though his own has developed a sheen of sweat, and an unmistakable pallor. "Do you still... like the pain? Now that you can feel it?"

"Not really." He feels a fraud for reducing a complex answer to that, but it's the essentials of what Duke wants to know. Yes, it is going to hurt him. No, he won't enjoy that part. Yes, he wants to do this anyway.

"If we see how you fare with the preparation," Duke says, swallowing, "will you promise to go along with what's _sane?_ I'm not going to be hard, rough, fast, or any of the things you're always kicking me to do. It will be very slow, and very careful. Can you settle for that?"

Nathan can do that. Especially since he's starting to wonder about the sanity of any of this approach. It was all so much clearer in his head, before he tried to lay it out and explain. "Can we get these clothes off of me?" he asks, writhing and tugging at the collar of his shirt. He's so _warm_. They writhe around and when they press back together, Nathan's on top. Duke probably engineered that, but he's less worried now that he's fairly sure he won't freak out if things are the other way around, now that it's just the practicality of being easy on his current injuries.

It does occur to him, though, that he may have unfairly cornered his lover. "You don't have to do this if you really don't want to." His clothes are in a heap on the floor and their cocks are slick, hot, throbbing pressure where their bodies meet.

Duke groans at him. "Do _not_ say that after telling me what's at stake."

"Which was why I wasn't planning to tell you," Nathan says, irritably, before being left incoherent by sensation as Duke reaches down, lines them up and thrusts, the heat of their shafts sliding together. Duke swears and catches him to spare his injuries as he loses his balance and almost belly-flops.

"You're still a freakin' newbie at this whole 'feeling' business, but of course you want to jump in at the deep end as usual," Duke gripes.

"I was thrown in there anyway," Nathan says, "remember?"

He regrets it as real pain crosses Duke's face. " _Why_ are you so pissed about that? Of all the things, losing your affliction... Okay, I was stupid on cosmic levels and it's only down to luck that I didn't kill you, but I _didn't_ kill you, and if I hadn't done it, we couldn't even be together..."

"Not now." Nathan grabs his face and kisses him to shut him up. When he pulls away, Duke silenced, he crawls to get the lube.

He would do the preparation himself -- Duke is still so tentative around his body -- but he can't easily stretch to reach down there with the restrictions upon his upper body movements. He lies instead on his back with his legs bent up and wide, and rolls the lube toward Duke for his attention.

"You've done this a million times," he reminds, with an edge. "You didn't actually do it the worst of the last times."

"Jesus. Shut _up_ ," says Duke, crawling almost on his belly across the sheets, up between Nathan's legs. "I'm going to gag you." A different kind of arousal gathers in Nathan, the old familiar one, and he smirks.

"Not while we do this," Duke amends. "You don't think you might need your mouth to say, oh... for example, things like, 'Ow,' and, 'that hurts,' and, 'stop the fuck now'?"

"I might say 'ow'," Nathan allows.

As it happens, he doesn't say anything as Duke slides a lubed finger inside him, or when he joins it shortly with another. It's different than he imagined. Tighter. More painful... more painful, probably, even when he's _not_ already sore. Duke gauges something from his breathing of what he's refusing to voice. "It gets easier. You just need time to adjust, let the muscles relax."

Duke should know. He didn't like this at first.

"I'm all right." Then, Duke's fingers encounter something that sends his nervous system a cascade of sparks so powerful he almost passes out. "Not... not too much of that, or you'll finish me off." He whuffs a loopy laugh at his own turn of phrase.

Duke shoots him a shirty look. "This is why I keep saying _start smaller_." He adds another finger, and lays his head on Nathan's thigh, and kisses him there, then starts nibbling along the crease down toward Nathan's groin while his fingers continue. Duke licks up Nathan's shaft and engulfs the tip of his cock for just a moment. The noise Nathan makes isn't particularly stoic. Duke laughs at him. His fingers draw out and his hands slide to grip Nathan's hips. "God, I want you like this. I wish I'd chance to re-learn you like this. It's not fair that... You _should_ get to live, to feel. It shouldn't have to end up being more like a punishment."

He levers up onto his knees, moves closer in between Nathan's legs, and hesitates.

Nathan puts his hands over the hands still on his hips, flattening and capturing them there. "We can do it. William doesn't get to ruin this. We can... beat him." He chews the words a bit distastefully. They sound too pat to him, for what's at stake.

"Please don't talk about William while we're trying to have sex?" Duke asks plaintively. Putting a joke on it. Making it funny. That's what Duke does.

Nathan feels Duke slide into him, hot and stretching, still painful in spite of everything, and the world focuses down to the inescapable penetration of his body. He starts to breathe fast -- there's a moment of panic that it _is_ too much, that he might overload on this sensation, his heart bursting here and now -- and his whole body rushes with heat. The sound of the ocean fills his ears, rushing and violent. Things he's forgotten. Things he'd never felt to start with. How tight flesh is straining flesh. Stretch and resistance. The overwhelming fullness.

"Stay with me." Duke's hands clasp his face. "Stay with me, Nathan."

He mumbles something. He doesn't know. He still can't make that promise. Then he realises Duke is only talking about the _now_.

Nathan isn't used to arousal that doesn't require effort. He visualises, focuses, runs it over and over in his brain; finds other buttons to push, and punches them all he can. That's been the way for... a long time. Varyingly successful, and only really honed in the past few months to become an experience worth bothering with. This... is effortless. It's like flying, when for years he's only been able to crawl.

"Open your eyes," Duke's voice says. "Come on. You've done this. You've had sex since we... came back."

Yes. Sitting up with Duke struggling to stay on top of him, and on a bunch of pain pills which Nathan realises abruptly may have numbed more than pain. He's due another dose now, and the world is sharper... although the world has been sharper in general, today, so it may be him, not the pills, after all. There's a very real difference in intensity. "You made us fall off the bed," he mutters, and opens his eyes as he bucks upward against Duke.

Duke obligingly starts to move more, though far from vigorously. Soft and slow. Very gentle. "Wasn't my fault," he grunts, "that your numb ass can't handle orgasms."

"It just... needs practice." A line about Duke needing to teach him dies on his lips. Nathan doesn't want to lose this -- can't imagine living without it -- but Audrey always overpowers him. Tomorrow, he doesn't know what he'll do or say.

He loses the thought thread entirely as Duke spills into him and he _feels it_ , and it's a closeness that all but shatters him, for all they've shared it a hundred times before.

***


	4. Remains

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Decision time for Nathan and Duke -- and Audrey -- to try to map out a future for Haven... and themselves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last part, and since there _is_ a definitive conclusion here, bear in mind that I am drawing the threads to a close while ignoring a good deal of the solutions that were suggested in season 5 canon, the first draft of the story having been written before those reveals. In a way, it's academic whether much of the information revealed in season 5 is true or not in this 'verse, because Nathan and Duke and co. don't have that knowledge and can only speculate in the absence of it.

**Part 4: Remains**

They are not fixed. But they are more fixed than they have any right to be, in the time they've had, after the scale of their fall, and that much will have to be enough... No matter what the outcome today.

The morning seems to come like flicking a switch. Nathan rolls over and blinks in the sunlight from the overhead window, surprised that he slept. The only reasons he's been sleeping at all well recently are probably exhaustion and anaesthetics. He's been pushing his body fiercely, damaged as it is. In response, it seized the time to repair. Duke wakes when he turns over, and Nathan has the impression that Duke slept more fitfully.

They don't greet the day with sex. The morning could be all the time they have left, but there's no urgent compulsion driving them to fill it with physical last goodbyes. Instead, they drift in and out of each other's personal space -- in the shower, leaving the bathroom door wide open, dressing, at breakfast -- and they don't say much, but small touches pass between them like secrets.

Occasionally, Duke says something like, "If you choose Audrey, then you know me. I'm the guy who sails off in his boat to the next place and gets over it." He's trying to pave the way, still, for Nathan to let him go, as if he's trying to convince himself ahead of time that he _can_ let Nathan go, when Nathan is the one who isn't sure he can live without Duke.

It's a quarter to nine and they need to leave -- separately, they need to leave -- and Nathan still doesn't know what he'll do when it comes to crunch time.

They drive to the station where Duke exchanges his truck for Nathan's Bronco and goes to pick up Jennifer and head onward to Lucassi. Nathan is left with the truck that has a left hand gear shift and carries on to the morgue. Dwight's SUV is already parked at the base of the steps leading up to the main entrance, and after the painful trudge up the steps, Nathan finds Dwight waiting with Jordan inside. Jordan offers a stiff nod, and Dwight a tight smile and a speculativestudy. Nathan also cleaned and checked his old gun this morning and it sits now in its customary position at the back of his hip. Not so customary is that he can feel it there: its weight, edges, subtle threat.

Numbness always involved taking a lot of the world on faith. That's one of the reasons Duke's pranks -- the sort of pranks Duke used to make -- always alarmed him and rubbed him so far the wrong way.

Dwight notices the gun. Okay, so Nathan can't use it anyway, not here, but it's a solid and comforting prop.

All in all, Nathan feels about as fixed as he was ever going to get, too, in so narrow a time frame.

"Good, you're all here," Gloria comments, bustling in. She has gloves on her hands. "Sorry. Drowning," she states as she strips the gloves off. "Robert Glendower, poor little sod. His brother dragged him back to shore, but nothing anyone could do by that time."

"Don't tell Duke," Nathan begs. All of them look at him. Gloria sighs.

"We can try, but honey, things have a way of getting out. It's not his _fault_. Probably saved a bunch of those kids. People living by the shore started keeping a lot of firepower close at hand, since the other attacks."

"If it gets out in a week, it'll still be better than now," Nathan counters, knowing Duke won't see it the way she describes. Also knowing Duke won't appreciate the effort to hide it from him, but not remotely sorry. "Let's just try to keep it quiet. He only reads the horoscopes in the _Haven Herald_ lately."

Dwight's eyebrows raise. "I've been in on one of the coffee breaks the Teagues spend making those up."

Nathan gives a bark of laughter. "Don't tell him that, either." He isn't sure if he's saying that to spare Duke or just to save it for future ammunition himself.

The crushing uncertainty of whether he'll ever get to use it takes him unexpectedly.

Without Nathan, and with the burden of his curse to run from, Nathan doesn't think that Duke will stay in Haven. Nathan doesn't even necessarily think he _should_. Duke can 'help' people here, sure -- at a cost in lives. But eventually, if or presumably when he goes the route of Wade, the route William gave them a preview of, the price is too steep to balance the help. Especially considering that what William did to them must have shortened that nosedive into blood, need and obsession significantly. Soon, perhaps, Duke will leave, go out with the tide, and the _Cape Rouge_ might never return to the shores of Haven.

"Right." Gloria claps her hands. "Well, why don't we go see to Sleeping Beauty?" She unlocks the door of the storeroom and Nathan is tempted to draw his gun, knowing what she'd said about William waking before, having a good idea of why that door is locked. Dwight notices his aborted movement and offers a taser.

Gloria wheels William out of the storeroom and into the larger space of the lab. William is still sleeping, though his body moves occasionally, sluggishly. He's more active than yesterday. "Well, we said 9.15," Gloria says. "We're about on the dot now... Wanted to get them both out of it at the same time, 'cause I don't like playing with this drag factor between them when you do one thing to one that effects the other. Seems to me that if they're connected, that sort of thing is only connecting them further." She pinches a drip between her thumb and forefinger and drives it out of William. "Could be a few minutes, could be half an hour. Depends how deep he is." She watches the body on the gurney twitch. "So maybe not that deep," she adds caustically. "I could wait 'til he's conscious to pull out the catheter...? No? Okay, then. Any delicate stomachs, avert your eyes."

They wait. Jordan fiddles with something in her hands that looks like pepper spray or mace. Nathan checks the cuffs holding William down to the gurney.

William wakes up with a yawn and a restrained stretch, a taunt on his lips. "Wow. There's something to be said for a good, long sleep, huh?" His pale blue eyes make a study of their faces that's far too alert in the circumstances, and disconcerting for it. "What? Was I... not supposed to enjoy that? You should try catching eight hours straight when you're exiled to a hell dimension. So..." He bounces on the gurney, jangling his cuffs. "You guys must be ready for Round Two."

"If we could put you out forever, we would," Dwight growls. "We're not going to ask that sacrifice of Audrey."

"'Audrey', now? I see." William picks that up instantly. "But if she's been asleep as long as I have, that means you haven't..." A grin comes over his face, the one that says, _oh, I've so got you_. "Oh, guys. This is gonna be fun." He makes a show of having a good look around into every corner of the room before asking Nathan, "No Duke?"

"He's with Audrey." Nathan's body vibrates with the strain of being face to face with the enemy and, because of Audrey, knowing he can't attack. "I know what you did."

"...Yeah." William's face flattens very slightly. "Maybe that went further than I anticipated, but what the hell, here you are. Just _look_ at you, all un-Troubled and clean and fresh again. That's a _taunt_ to an artist. The lure of the blank canvas. I guess you wouldn't understand, a gun-toting cowboy like you... I still mean to do something about that, by the way." He waggles an open palm and _leers_.

"You'll be in _jail_ ," Nathan snarls, screwing the words out at the limits of what his voice can manage.

"Interesting choice, by the way. Duke... is with _Audrey_." William just stops and offers his quizzical look around, bringing everyone else into the question in his face. "Which is kind of... not a choice at all, right? Or are you just hoping you can keep both, and they won't mind? I know _Mara_ would be up for a threesome, but I don't know how your Audrey Parker feels."

"Shut up," Dwight orders. "You're still under arrest. We're going to take you back to your cell, so you can plan your next mischief from there. How long were you exiled? Few hundred years? Better take up reading, or find a really engrossing hobby, because we're going to bury you in a cell with no door and throw food and a paperback down there once a fortnight."

"Wait, wait." William tries to spread his hands -- foiled by the cuffs -- and tries to exude innocence -- foiled by his own personality. "You can't treat a citizen that way. You're an officer of the law." He waggles a finger at Nathan. "So are you, so no plotting murder on the side. Connected, remember?"

"You're not a citizen of the United States," Dwight says impatiently. "Far as I can tell, you're not even a citizen of _Earth_. You don't even have a last name."

"...No. You just don't _know_ my last name." He says that with exaggerated patience, but he doesn't tell them anything.

"I will pepper spray the fuck out of you," Jordan promises, stepping back well out of touching distance and holding up her weapon as they uncuff William's left wrist from the gurney "You forced me to kill that man. I don't give a shit if I give Audrey runny eyes."

William looks at her with his usual trepidation and whines, "I thought you people _fought_ the scary things..."

Dwight bounces the back of a fist off the underside of his chin, just enough to jerk his head up, not a blow to really hurt. "You leave her alone." He transfers his hand to William's shoulder and hauls him off the gurney onto his feet. After four days lying down, his legs all but collapse. Jordan needs to keep her distance from William as much as she does Audrey, so Gloria grabs William's other side and she and Dwight keep him upright. Nathan cautiously ducks in to affix a chain to his ankles at Dwight's silent urging.

"Right, let's take him down to the car and get him in a cell." There's sweat on Dwight's face but he's beginning to show a glimmer of relief there, too. William didn't wake up crying vengeance and raining death on everyone, for example.

Dwight digs in his pocket for keys, which he hands to Jordan. "Follow us close in the SUV and keep your eyes open. We'll take Nathan's car. You okay to drive?"

"Yes," Nathan says. "But I'm here with Duke's truck."

"No problem. Gloria?"

"Yeah. I got a hypo full of the good stuff, he shows any signs of trouble."

"Oh, goody," William says. "I likes me the good stuff."

Jordan looks at him like she wants to just pepper spray him anyway. Dwight waves her ahead, and the rest of them follow, slowly.

William purposely copies and references at least half a dozen prison movies during the walk down to the car.

***

They're back in the station before Nathan has a moment to phone Duke to ask how things are going on their end -- where his real fears lie, and shouldn't. William is back in a cell, with Jordan and Stan stationed outside, armed with non-lethal but disabling weapons. Nathan stands in Dwight's office while Dwight paces and bunches his fists in his short hair, exuding strain. Dwight doesn't trust how William is taking this. Preferred outcome, Nathan feels, was William coming out fighting, themselves knocking him on his ass and throwing him in jail again. This, on the other hand, feels like a ploy, feels like the bastard is only biding his time.

"We are, uh, okay," Duke's voice says, sounding a long way off, distant and flat. "Audrey's fine. We're just going to get a coffee, and then we'll come join you, if we're clear to do that."

Nathan checks with Dwight then relays, "You're clear. Be careful." He doesn't know what precisely he's warning against. It's Audrey. But even if suspicion hasn't choked him the same way it has Dwight -- William's human, or humanlike, after all, just as Audrey is, and he's not going to be his usual self after being sunk in an enforced slumber for four days, whatever he tries to project -- he feels an uneasiness about all this too.

There's so much else he wants to ask, but he cuts the call and puts the phone away, because Duke has other things to focus on and so does he.

"Can you really do that?" he asks Dwight. "The cell you mentioned. Or was that an idle threat?"

Dwight shoots him a darkly intense study. "It's not idle. The Guard have... _means_. There've been a lot of useful Troubles among their ranks, over the years. And there've been dangerous Troubles or dangerous _Troubled people_ who couldn't be contained by normal means. There are a few oubliettes scattered around town. There's one out on the cliff near the lighthouse that's empty right now."

Nathan gapes at him.

"The Guard don't like to kill their own. That's Crocker's route... Simon Crocker. The Rev's," he swiftly corrects. "End of the Troubles, they'd be back to normal, and either harmless or at least _manageable_ , able to be punished by regular means."

"Except now they won't," Nathan bleakly fills in. He wonders how many more death warrants he's signed, sooner or later. How many life sentences.

Dwight tips a shoulder in half a shrug.

"Is he even safe left somewhere like that? He should be under twenty-four hour watch."

"We can do it between HPD and the Guard." And it _has_ occurred to Nathan before now that Dwight is a handy intersection of both. "Indefinitely." He licks his lower lips contemplatively and narrows his eyes. "I was serious about the paperback. I'm thinking about going for Regency romances for the first ten years."

Nathan gives him a sidelong look. "That's cruel and unusual, Chief."

"We have to get him in there first without William pulling anything fishy," Dwight responds tersely, and then that conversation is pretty much over.

Gloria comes back and takes Nathan into his own office for what's become the more-or-less daily exam. "More movement here," she comments as she feels around his throat, teasing flexion out of his stiff neck. "I wanna get you back in for another x-ray, tomorrow maybe, or the day after. See how that bone is knitting. You're not whispering all the time anymore, so I take that as progress -- wouldn't hurt to document this thoroughly and add to the literature on it."

She declares his ribs passable and pats him on the stomach before drawing his shirt back together again. "You try to be less of a walking jigsaw, okay? Now, my work here today is done, at least until the next corpse. Try not to be that, either." She slaps his clothed shoulder.

Gloria departs the station. Nathan gets a coffee and thinks about Duke and Audrey. There's paperwork, but he doesn't know yet how he's going to write up William officially... _if_ he's going to write up William officially. Seems like Dwight's preparing to disappear him on a permanent basis. Nathan can't say he's sorry about that.

Duke and Audrey arrive at the station an hour later, by which time Nathan's long buried himself in the paper trail of the Glendower clean-up, but he's been aware of Dwight tracking from his office down the corridor to the cells and back again approximately every ten minutes. The sooner William is buried in a hole, the better.

Nathan jerks to his feet as Audrey comes through the door, dropping papers from his hands. A pen rolls off the desk to the floor. She marches up to him and braces on her feet, legs parted in fighting stance, and her hand twitches as if she wants to strike him, but she doesn't.

Her eyes blaze Audrey but her clothes are still Lexie's. William's Lexie, the one who only got more spiky, more adorned with ironmongery, got more leather, showed more skin, the longer she hung around with him. The trappings give Nathan as much pause as they always did, but those are Audrey's eyes.

"You _ass,_ Nathan," she says.

"I'm sorry..." he starts.

" _No_ ," she snaps, tone growing fiercer. "No 'sorry'. Did you seriously imagine that after everything that's happened, I'd want you _back_? I love you... I always will... but _no_. Just _no._ Get your head out of your ass and get over yourself."

Nathan's stunned speechless. Duke is standing behind Audrey, looking furtive, horror and hope and confusion all mixed in his expression and stance. Jennifer Mason is outside, on the other side of the glass, averting her face now with her hands over her ears, a polite girl. Duke's too fixated on what's happening between them, and was never polite to begin with.

"Audrey..." Nathan begins.

" _Yes_ ," she snaps, making it an affirmation of reality.

"I'm sorry I hurt you."

"You hurt a lot more than me." But she heaves in a breath, abruptly, cutting herself off and holding back from savaging Nathan's tatters of soul. "But that's in the past. We can't dwell on that anymore. We have to focus on making something of the cards we're left with _now._ All of us. So we need to leave... this... behind."

She stands there awkwardly in an abrupt and stretching silence. Duke raises a hand cautiously and offers. "Cool with me."

Audrey keeps her eyes fixed on Nathan and jabs a pointing finger toward Duke, increasingly emphatically, cross creases intensifying in her face. "There was no chance in hell that you were ever going to leave him. And I? I _did not need to wake up from a four day coma to that discussion_. So the two of you can damn well make up and get past this. I may not want you, but that doesn't mean I don't want you happy." She takes a step back away from him. As she's moving, her face starts to melt. She lunges back in close and says, "Oh, come here, you idiot."

She folds Nathan in a hug that is both intense and regretful and _carefully,_ carefully platonic. He feels her arms around his waist through his clothes, but their skin doesn't touch. Duke, behind her, stands with his eyebrows steadily climbing his forehead.

"Figure it out, Nathan," Audrey says as she pulls away. "I am going to get more coffee and talk to Dwight. I figure sleeping for four days is a six-cup situation, come the morning."

***

They look at each other once Audrey has gone, albeit with no great celebration. Nathan feels flattened by the encounter, after the strain of _choice_ that he's felt weighing on him so heavily, and he's more exhausted than relieved for having the choice taken from him. Relief he can't get to, yet. The part of him that loves Audrey still _aches_. And Audrey may be willing to forgive and be friends, but she thinks he's a coward.

"...No," Duke argues, and amends, "Yes. But you still had to be there in Team William. So only sort-of."

Nathan leans back at his desk and sighs. "What happened?"

Duke saunters uneasily over to take the guest chair and pull it close-in opposite him. That they talked about Nathan is all too obvious. Maybe it's Jennifer who he needs to grill, but she left with Audrey. "I'm sorry," Duke says. "I tried to talk her around."

Nathan frowns at him.

Duke gulps. "She said -- she didn't want you. I told her you'd done all this for her, and what it had cost you. She couldn't ditch you, after everything. I said... I couldn't be what you need, the way she could. She said 'fuck that'."

They both grimace. Lexie deWitt was not entirely a fabrication, even if they may never be sure exactly where Lexie ends and Audrey begins. Some kind of proto-personality, interrupted, incomplete.

"She told me to get over my own drama, and that there's no way 'that idiot' would leave me, whether he knows it or not." Duke meets Nathan's eyes, then rises slowly from the chair. Its soft scrape against the floor seems almost tuneful, and he just lifts himself enough to lean over the table and kiss Nathan, then eases down again.

Nathan follows his progress with an odd fixity. The pace of the world seems to have slowed down. Audrey rejected him. He... did not expect that. He has always been so _sure_ of what they had, fierce, burning and pure. The stuff of high romance and fairy tales. That is not what he has with Duke. He has never been entirely sure what he has with Duke.

Just because it doesn't fit a recognisable pattern doesn't mean it's inferior.

"You should know..." Duke says, unsteadily. He, too, seems like the world has rocked under his feet, seems like he barely dare move or act. He taps the side of his fist on the desk top and scrapes at the wood grain with his fingernails. "I get that she has every reason to be monumentally pissed at you, after the Barn and... Sarah." He shoots Nathan an incredulous question with his eyes, like he does _every time_ that comes up. "On top of... all the rest. Us. But... when she says she doesn't want you, I still think it's William she's thinking about. This... influence he has on her. Maybe she's rejecting you because she's still not in her right mind."

"The sooner we put him down that hole, the better," Nathan growls, and doesn't explain when Duke's face flickers with question. It'll all be laid out for him soon enough. "No. She's made her decision. Everything she said makes sense. I've just been too stupid to see it. Too many betrayals. Too much... carelessness. And then--" He stands up, rounds the table. He wants to touch Duke, but Duke's body language is a little too closed again. Instead he leans on the near edge next to Duke, rests a hand on the desk, between Duke's hands, waiting to be invited in.

"Then why aren't we the same?" Duke asks, still stubborn, still questioning.

"I don't know." He lets his wrist brush Duke's wrist. "But we're not."

"If Audrey's still in love -- or whatever -- with William, that's a problem," Duke says. "We need to get them away from each other. Far away."

Nathan is already thinking that an oubliette in the ground won't be far enough. Not so long as it's within the boundaries of Haven. Audrey and William have their link. They're... connected. Much as they know Audrey _isn't_ like William, and would never want to be, the thought of her holding a direct line to William's brain is chilling. Far too dangerous to allow it to continue over any length of time. Nathan doesn't know how far away their oubliette would need to be to remain safe. And then, if it was far away, far _enough_ , they couldn't keep watch over it.

They still need another answer.

***

William stays in his cell, jokes with his jailors, reads out excerpts from his romance novel. Jordan marches out in disgust as her shift ends mid-afternoon, to be replaced by another trusted core member of the Guard, while Stan is spelled by another member of HPD who's in the know.

"It's like he's happy to be locked up," Jordan tells Nathan, pacing in his office. Duke is there, feet up on the spare desk, reading Nathan's reports and critiquing his grammar. It may be the first time Jordan and Duke have been in the same room since Duke's descent into the Crocker Curse, and even though Jordan isn't Troubled any more, it's obviously not thrilling her. "It's making Dwight insane trying to figure out what he's setting us up for, and Dwight's gonna be driving me insane being like this until it's fixed, so how about you work on _fixing_ that, Nathan?" She strokes her hair out of her face and twitches her shoulder as she turns her back on Duke.

Nathan finds that he prefers her curt, snapped judgements to her attempts to unravel his problems with sympathy. He weaves his fingers together and regards her over the top of them. "How am I supposed to do that?"

"I don't know. Talk to Audrey, or whoever she is. You're supposed to be our Troubles expert." She turns on her heel and slams out of the door.

"Back to normal there, then," Duke observes.

"Thank God," Nathan says, with heavy sincerity. "She's right, this is... a waste of time." He shoves his pen away from him. "I can't focus on paperwork while this is still out there. I'm going to talk to William."

Duke looks dubious, but doesn't argue against it. He follows Nathan down the corridor, and Nathan considers telling him to wait back in the office, but it isn't like Duke doesn't have a right to face the guy who did this to them, if Nathan's going to dive in like an idiot. He keeps the taser he took from his desk firmly in his hand and hopes it won't be Duke he ends up having to use it on.

"Can we get a minute," he says to the two on William duty, not really posing it as a question. The cop passes Duke a taser as they remove to a station just outside the door. Nathan says firmly, "If you inadvertently tase Audrey when she's in the middle of something, she'll flatten you. I'm not getting in her way."

"Huh..." Duke puts the taser in his pocket as they fully enter the cell.

"Wow!" William shoots to his feet as soon as he sees them, dancing on the spot, loose-limbed like a puppet. "Duke and Nathan. I missed you earlier, Duke. You did such a _good_ job of cleaning up after all my fun. You wanna go again...?"

Duke pales and Nathan wishes he hadn't brought him after all. He retrieves one of the sentries' chairs from a corner and places it in front of the bars, safely out of arm's reach. "Don't respond to him," he tells Duke, who takes a position hovering behind his shoulder as he sits down.

"You're a dick," Duke says to William. Duke never listens. "You figure screwing with Audrey's friends will make for some big happy-making present?"

"Well, yeah." William, grinning, pulls over the bench in his cell so he can sit opposite Nathan, mirroring his stance. "This is gonna be fun. Interrogate me. I'm ready for it. You won't make me crack." His voice stabs at a lazy mimicry of some tough guy movie role. He put his hands on his knees.

"What did you _do_ after you escaped here from your... other dimensional prison?" Duke asks. "Watch a hundred crappy flicks?"

"I missed a few hundred years," William hazards, possibly actually sounding faintly offended. "How else is a guy to try and blend in?"

"You really don't blend in," Duke tells him.

"Hush." Nathan's not in this to give William pointers to improve his game. "Come on, William, what's the plan?" He forces a weary smile onto his face. "What is it you're waiting for? What's the play this time?"

William shrugs. "Me? I'm just enjoying your company. Not much opportunity for guy-talk in a hell dimension. You want to talk sports, I'm _there_."

"I know there's something else you want," Nathan says, "or you wouldn't be _sitting here._ " Keeping hold of his temper starts becoming a lost cause.

"TV with cable would be nice," William allows.

"Good call," murmurs Duke, in spite of himself. "Dwight's a hard man."

"Doesn't matter. I have my book." William holds it up, pages open.

Nathan twitches and snaps his mouth shut just in time. William sees and looks smug, and throws him, "I told you before, I've only ever wanted one thing. Mara." His expression twists. "Nah... really, I'm just going to sit here and drive the Chief crazy wondering."

"You're doing all this to get at Dwight?" Nathan picks up flatly, not believing it.

"Well, you didn't think it was about someone _else_ , did you?" He feigns a shocked revelation. "That'd be so embarrassing. In fact, I did _hear_ that _you_ were Chief, once, before you... 'fucked the whole of the town up', I believe was the phrase I heard? To think we could've been adversaries. Too bad you're just too low down the food chain now."

Nathan tries not to grind his teeth and does roll his eyes. "That's cute."

"Hey, now." William waggles a finger. "Careful with your boyfriend standing there looking on. I hear he can get mean."

"You--" It's just as well Duke holds _himself_ back, aborting his lunge clear of the bars, because the rage that flares through Nathan at William's smugness, like he's proud of what he did to them, he has his hands full controlling his own reactions. Duke seethes and clenches his fists. He grabs Nathan's shoulder. "Let's get the fuck out of here, Nate. We're just providing entertainment."

Nathan's reluctant. He'd hoped to learn something. If they stay longer, they might be able to make up for the jibes that William got through. Or -- not. He jerks his head in a small nod and lets Duke pull him to his feet.

"This really is nicer than my last prison!" William calls after them as they go. "Kinda more like vacationing, really. People bring me food and I have a book. I even think there might be some corset-ripping soon!"

"He is..." Duke breathes heavily as they stumble out of the door, and his face is red with anger. "So _annoying."_

They both give looks of sympathy to the guard duty as they head back.

"I just don't get it," Duke complains. "How did Audrey ever see anything in that? I know, I know, each to their own, love's a funny thing, _but_..."

"We still don't have any clues why he'd be so content to stay in a cell," Nathan groans, scrubbing his hands over his face. Talking to William brought everything back again. It makes him feel unclean, the way the guy leered at _him_ , specifically.

"He told us what he wants." Duke thumps a rhythm on the wall with his fist. "The only thing he's interested in -- has ever been interested in -- is Audrey. Or the person he thinks is inside Audrey. If he's telling the truth, then it follows that everything he does has that at its heart."

Nathan sags against the wall opposite him, feeling drained. Movement is too much effort. William is in a _cell_ and it still feels like he's the one in control. Nathan feels cold, abruptly. "Only reason he'd be content to idle around is if he believes he already has her."

Duke stares at him.

"When Audrey put William out," Nathan explains raggedly, "she deliberately used their connection to do it. Four days. Gloria was complaining about using the 'drag factor', but... keeping them both down was still drawing on their connection. What if he thinks he's so close now that he's _already_ won?"

"Then we definitely need to keep them away from each other. Don't you think we should be getting William out of Haven right now?" Duke's at his shoulder, urging him on. Back to his office, he'd thought, but they seem to have stalled at the coffee machine -- Nathan misses the specifics of the journey while he's trying to _think_. Jordan was right. They need options.

"How far would be far enough?" he returns to Duke. "They used a different dimension last time."

"Great. So we just need to discover how they did _that_." Duke throws his hands up in agitation. "All this supernatural _crap._ Howard... the Barn... whoever the hell the jerks were that decided it was a great idea to stick Audrey in this cycle anyway... Where are _they_ now? They set in place all this elaborate _shit_ and yet they didn't make proper contingency for one lone dick with a pistol showing up and gunning down their grand plan...? Sorry, buddy."

Nathan snorts. "It's true."

"Yeah, I know, but." Duke catches Nathan's arm and squeezes it.

Nathan gives in and sits down on one of the chairs by the coffee machine. "We need to talk to Audrey. Vince, Dave, Dwight, the inner core of the Guard, and this town, and all it's damned secrets. If we can find where those people came from, the Barn-builders, or anything they _did_ leave behind..."

"Are we talking about aliens here?" Duke's forehead creases. He takes a gulp of coffee, veiling his expression. "Man, I'll have egg on my face if Toomey turns out to be right after all."

"If..." Nathan screws up his face with distaste at the subject matter. "If they came from another world, it was from something like another dimension. Like William keeps saying. Not in a spaceship. Are those still aliens?"

Duke shrugs. "How'd I know?"

"It's you likes science fiction. _Time travel rules_ ," Nathan jibes. He sighs and shakes his head furiously. This is achieving nothing. They need to save _Audrey_. He owes her that much. At least that much.

An office door opens a few feet from them and Dwight emerges, looking serious. "Couldn't help but overhearing. About back-up plans and... science fiction." He looks between them. "I guess you both weren't paying much attention at the time, but Jennifer has a book with a creepy rhyme in the front that glows and kills monsters. Would that be the kind of thing worth taking a closer look at?"

***

In the event, they gather in Jennifer and Audrey's apartment above the _Gull_ , more because of the ready availability of food and alcohol and its sort-of-neutral status than the available space. Duke and Nathan arrive first, and Duke brings up extra chairs from the restaurant while Nathan sits nervously beneath the weight of the looks Audrey's giving him. He tries to examine his own feelings for her, and finds them so mixed, so confusing, that he doesn't know what to do with any of it.

She was his first friend in a long, long time. The first person he let close again. She was his first experience of physical sensation in just as long. It was intense, overwhelming. He remembers the months he spent fighting it, knowing that because he could _feel_ her, that complicated things just too badly... Need and obsession and other impulses were too inextricably woven up with the feelings he had for her already as a friend and partner for them to get involved. _Did_ he step over the line? _Was_ it love? Or does it even matter, now, when so much came between them? 

If his response to finding out that Lexie was still Audrey hadn't been to spend four days trying desperately to repair his relationship with Duke, things might have been different. Nathan finds he can confess to himself now _when_ and _where_ the choice was made. He'd spent days fretting, tearing himself up over it, when the decision had already passed unnoticed.

"Are you okay?" Audrey finally breaks up the silent sidelong glances to ask. "I was... harsh, earlier. Don't take that the wrong way: we are _so_ over, if we ever 'were' to begin with. But I guess I'm... not so okay about this. It makes it difficult to, uh, gauge things. That, and I'm still plenty pissed about choosing to come back as someone who remembered loving _you_ and then having to spend all that time covering your ass while you boned Duke. I could've come through that door as Lexie and been carefree."

"Lexie was real, then?" Nathan asks. He toys with his drink. She's given him some sort of non-alcoholic cocktail. It has fruit on a stick and a paper parasol, and leaves him unsure if he's being subtly teased.

"Sure, Lexie was real." She nods. The drawl is strong again. It surfaces and vanishes increasingly, now. In the days she was pretending to be Lexie, he has subsequently realised that it always tended to vanish mid-crisis, or when a situation was tense. "Worked in a bar, had the wacko bondage ex, never fired a gun in her life. Look at me now. I'm Audrey _and_ I'm Lexie, and if that's not confusing enough... There's whoever the hell William wants me to be, fighting under there trying to get out, as well."

"I'm sorry," Nathan says again.

"No." She shakes her head. "It's like, when I think about it, there never was an 'us'. We never talked about it, didn't commit anything. There were... feelings. Crazy, world-rending, self-sacrificing, out-of-control feelings, but it's not like we even once _had_ that fucking _talk_ , you and me. Just a kiss on a hillside surrounded by people with guns, with the world about to fall down around our ears."

"It wasn't fair," Nathan says.

"No, it wasn't. But I didn't promise myself to you, and you didn't promise anything to me, except that you weren't going to lose me to that goddamn Barn, and guess what? You didn't."

Nathan can't help but feel like there ought to be _more_ to it than that. She was the one person in the world he could touch. He held her and felt the stirrings of destiny. Did he derail something profound when he gave in to lust and fucked Duke? Or is it only that all the connections were coincidence, inflated inside his own head... If so, then apparently in hers just as much.

Something strikes him. "William said that." He had forgotten, amid everything else. "That you chose to come back as Audrey."

"Yeah. He said I could be whoever I most wanted to be on the other side of the door." She winces, and adds. "I guess that explains why he _really_ doesn't like you. He came to me talking about big love and who I really was, and remembering... I bet he was hoping I'd come through the other side as the person he remembers, who loves _him_."

The last pieces slide and _click_ into place. No, Nathan doesn't think he's unduly elevating himself to William's primary adversary. That Audrey should choose him over William, then he should reject Audrey, makes it a messy matter of pride.

"I never told you about the door and that whole choice, what with pretending to be Lexie all this time." Her face is apologetic. Maybe there are things they'd have understood sooner if they'd had all the information pooled. Maybe it wouldn't have made any difference. But either way, it's in the pursuit of avoiding any more errors like that they're all gathering here today.

"Duke and I happened by accident," Nathan says, with difficulty. Then he stops and realises he still idealises her too much to ever tell her the whole of that story. Besides, there are parts of it even Duke can never know. The darkest of his corners, he'll keep for himself alone. The truth is, they're probably what enabled him to survive more or less intact, though that might be more poetic if they weren't also his downfall in the first place.

Audrey tips her shoulder, and maybe she guesses there's more to it. Maybe she even guesses a little of what's really behind it, because she, too, came back to Haven with new kinks and shady corners. Duke only knows that he wasn't the first time Nathan had ever been with a man, and if he wonders about that, he hasn't asked.

But Duke is pushing back through the screen door, chairs in each hand, and Jennifer is pausing in the door to _harrumph_ loudly on her way back from the bathroom... and probably spent five minutes trying to find things to do in there so she didn't disturb their talk, Nathan realises. An open plan apartment isn't the best forum for private discussions and personal secrets.

Dwight's coming in behind Duke, another couple of chairs in hand. They probably have too many chairs, now. Jordan follows behind Dwight, and the room looks packed. Jennifer puts the coffee maker on, then pours out six mugs and puts it on again. Audrey pulls a face and starts taking bottles down from the cupboard. Lexie doesn't do coffee unadulterated. A few minutes after that, the Teagues arrive, Vince with a couple of shadows bearing a Guard tattoo, Dave oddly nervous and looking like he _really_ doesn't want to be there. Which is weird, then, and gets more so later.

All the major players. The council of war about the fate of William, and all of Haven, can begin.

***

It's the unprecedented event of Haven getting together to spit out the truth, to figure out the truth insofar as they know it, which means there's an edge of danger to the proceedings even before it's begun. By the time it's through, Jordan has twice had to be pulled back from killing her Guard masters, Dwight and Vince are exchanging glares of a very dark nature, and Dave Teagues will be spending the night in the cells, as well as William, to make damned sure they know he'll still be around in the morning. The Guard have just about stopped glaring at Nathan and Audrey, since they'd been almost over that one anyway and Nathan and Duke have been sprawled in each other's space on the sofa throughout. Vince keeps frowning down at his tattoo with deep unsettlement and so, to be honest, does Nathan -- even though his doesn't move and he had it inked there himself, by a man who cracked jokes about how groovy it was that 'his' design was catching on so well. Jennifer's apprehension of her book is more alarmed than even that. She looks like she wants to run away and have nothing more to do with this, but Nathan has faith in her expressed desire to help.

One thing they can all agree on is that the woman they know as Audrey Parker, among all her other names, has done so much for Haven throughout the years of her mysterious arrivals and subsequent disappearances as their sacrificial pawn. If there is no way to be rid of the Troubles, then it's their turn to salvage the identity she has left, and save her from becoming the monster William seeks.

Also in their interest, of course, to keep her around to continue to _fix_ the Troubles. Perhaps she can teach her understanding of them to others, as she did Nathan.

Nathan keeps his lips tight closed on one revelation he still wonders about, that maybe even Audrey hasn't considered. The precise meaning of _What was once your salvation is now your doom_ remains unclear. If William is the one she loves, that her _original_ personality loved, _he_ might be the one Lucy's solution refers to: a specific individual and not a vague prophecy after all. If that was the case, then even if Nathan and Audrey are no longer an epic tale of love rife for sacrifice-potential, killing _William_ could still end the Troubles.

But killing William will also kill Audrey.

If he wasn't going to let her walk into the Barn and a fate of supernatural amnesia to end the Troubles, he _isn't_ going to sign the warrant for her death. Even if he doesn't have the certainty of his feelings for her that he once did. Maybe not now more than ever. He owes a great deal, to others as well as Audrey, but he's already the man who ruined the town, and he'll live with the possibility that he perpetuated it by refusing to embrace human sacrifice in its fully literal meaning.

It does make him wonder what other secrets remain, that anyone else in this room will yet take to their grave.

At the end of the day, Vince is the leader of the Guard, and Nathan has seen how his old eyes mist when he looks at Audrey. Protector of the Troubled or not, they would both make the same decision. Maybe Vince harbours the very same thoughts, and would also never say.

Nathan suspects they'll get away with it. The Guard are too armed and aggressive and blinkered by their focus upon the primacy of force to really credit the indications that the Barn, the cycle, all of this, are powered by something as fragile and ephemeral as love. It was an issue of incredulity among them when it boiled down to Audrey killing Nathan because she loved him -- though they'd still have happily embracedkilling Nathan -- never mind introducing some shadowy otherworldly lover into the equation.

There are other things disclosed, that weren't secrets yet Nathan did not know them. At the time the incidents with Jennifer's book occurred, he and Duke were fighting a parade of deadly Troubles. In those frenetic, bloodsoaked weeks, if someone had mentioned to him that Jen had found a magic book, he can't say he'd be terrifically surprised that his own brain junked the information as inconsequential. Dwight figured out the fact that all the victims of the monster had shared the same birthday, and so if William's target had always been Jennifer...

There had to be a reason he was afraid of her. The book and its enclosed rhyme seem a damned good candidate.

If William's exile was to a 'hell dimension' -- though Duke claims he got that phrase from pop culture -- then is there a means to send him back? Jennifer's book and Vince's tattoo, it seems, may _literally_ point the way. "Nothing out there except the lighthouse and the open sea," says Duke, flinging back the drapes, opening the windows, gazing out of Audrey's balcony, across the darkened waters.

Their council turns into a treasure hunt: a midnight excursion which is only relayed to Nathan, forced by his physical incapacity to remain on the couch, back with Duke and Anna Benedict, Jordan and a fidgety Dave Teagues. Several telephone calls later, they're all back in the apartment above the _Gull_ again, the clues in Jen's book shifted along several pages. The _lighthouse_ is the heart of Haven. Only Jennifer can see the trapdoor to the secret cave underneath, where the maze from the Guard's tattoo marks the floor.

The gate needs four people to open it, but not just any four. Audrey, Jennifer, William and... the last, surprise addition, Dave Teagues.

"You remember that place?" Nathan demands of him. "What was it like?" But Dave, held down by Vince and two Guardsmen, can only shake his head, unable to go into details. Anna Benedict fills in, unnecessarily, "The experience was obviously traumatising."

It's to Jennifer's consternation that they can't get anything from Dave about the world they both came from. She clutches her book in her hands and looks scared, the crux of the plan to shut down William, and a stranger in town -- a randomly seeded contingency to that end. It seems a callous position to place someone in. There are still times Nathan finds it hard to regret he shot Howard.

Eventually they have their plan for the morrow and the participants start to peel away. Dwight and Vince take Dave back to the cells. Anna Benedict and the other Guard leave with them. Jordan lingers to swap low-key conversation with Jennifer and Audrey. Gloria exchanges a few acerbic words then leaves to return to the baby. She's been at the spirits with a will, so Lucassi gives her a ride back. Duke's fingers slide up and down Nathan's bare arm from wrist to elbow as he feels himself sinking further into the seat. Duke's voice says from a long way off, "You didn't put any alcohol in those umbrella things, did you?"

"I'm fine," Nathan groans, though he knows he's drifting. He sits up and shakes himself, gets up and puts the coffee machine back on. Duke watches him, suspicious, blinking.

"We should stay here," Nathan says. He's been watching Jennifer and Audrey, marking their tension. It's late already. He doesn't want to abandon them to uncertainties and the night. "William's in a cell, but who knows what he might be planning? Some last-ditch effort to get at all of us, if he's figured out what we're going to try. It'll be harder for him if we stay together."

He sees something shift in Audrey's face, deeply mixed, apprehensive and disappointed and relieved. She thinks he's right. Can William sense traces of their plans through her? Who knows what she's getting back from him? She needs her friends with her tonight to keep her strong. Nathan would wish she didn't have to be there in the same place with William tomorrow at all, but they need them both to open the gate.

"Sounds good to me," Duke says. "I've drunk enough that I don't trust you not to arrest me if I get behind the wheel, and I _really_ don't fancy getting planted into a tree, the way you're half asleep already. Audrey? If you _did_ spike him, it's not funny. He's still on medication."

"She didn't," Nathan says, in time with Audrey's helpless laying out of her open palms and silently mouthed 'who, me?' -- which does give him pause, but he's sure his sense of taste is still good enough to pick alcohol out of a fruit drink. Some day his other senses might normalise, but they haven't yet. It's likely to be a gradual process, if it happens, after so many years relying on all these other clues about the world for both information and stimulation. In the meantime, and with the addition of new-minted sensation, Nathan suspects he's more wide-open to the world than anyone should be.

Anna Benedict might have something to say about that -- might have something to say about him _thinking that_ \-- but she's already gone.

"Lexie wasn't entirely irresponsible, you know?" Audrey retorts. "And cheers for the vote of confidence." She grabs the offered coffee from Nathan's hand, though she tips the remnant of her existing drink into it before making the swap.

"Yeah, I can see that," Duke says. "So you're happy with the way this goes, Audrey Parker?" He leans forward on the couch, planting his legs apart, accepts a coffee from Nathan but still looks intently at Audrey. "Stay in Haven. Fight Troubles. Grow old -- maybe... Hell, you've been doing this for centuries, so who knows how long it takes for you to grow old? -- and get to stay Audrey Parker?"

"Yeah." She gives a tight smile. "I guess that's a 'no' on the big romance, although what the heck? _Vince_ is still free, and I have to remind you guys, Sarah's still in here, too." She points to her own head and enjoys their expressions of horror.

"He's totally got a something," Jen agrees, slightly tipsy and oblivious. "Kind of a silver fox, right? Or more like a lion with all that curly mane." Her hands move expressively.

Jordan pulls the strangest of faces and flatly turns away, which is pretty funny in itself. "And on that note, I... am going to go. You all try not to be hungover for the showdown in the morning."

They make their farewells and then they're down to four.

It's almost like it used to be -- Jennifer extra, but an easy extra to have around, bubbly and content to meld into what places she fits in their existing dynamic. The lines are redrawn differently. Not that Audrey and Nathan ever did much hand-holding in Duke's presence, or at all, the way Duke and Nathan are doing now. Audrey stacks all the spare chairs next to the door to take down in the morning, waving Duke back into his seat when he starts to get up to help, then comes to join them, pulling another comfy chair closer to sit with Jen on the other side of the occasional table.

It's Duke who suggests getting the cards out -- of course it is. He's probably chosen his moment carefully, knowing Nathan's too tired to focus, let alone try to beat him.

"So, _are_ you okay?" Duke picks up to ask Audrey again, halfway into the first game. "Really okay?" And Nathan groans and gives up, folding his hand. He peels pills from the depth of his jeans pocket and takes them with his cooling coffee.

Audrey grimaces back across the hand of cards arranged in a professional fan between her fingers. "If this is to distract me like Nathan, it's not going to work. Ante up." She chucks a bill into the middle of the table.

Jen splutters. "Since when were we playing for money? The Teagues haven't paid me this month!"

"Yeah. You need to hold those boys upside-down and shake them out," Audrey opines, pure Lexie for a moment. "Play with what you've got on you."

Jen picks up a bottle cap from the edge of the table and chucks it into the centre and Audrey contorts her face approvingly and nods like it's a million bucks. She still glares at Nathan and Duke like it's their duty to offer up real cash for her to fleece.

Duke peels a note from a suspiciously thick roll that he returns to his inside pocket. Nathan holds up his empty hands. His cards are discarded on the table.

"Doesn't seem fair to make Nathan play for money," Duke says, insincerely. "He's half unconscious."

"Screw you," Nathan offers.

"Audrey," Duke says pointedly. She's dodged the question twice. Now he's paid cash.

"You know, I never thought I'd get this chance," she muses, as she casually puts her hand down and scrapes back the notes and bottle cap, barely looking at everyone else's cards. "Last year, I spent so long knowing I was going to forget _everything_. Who I was. Everyone I'd met and helped and loved. Then since I've been back, things have been so crazy, and the person William wants me to be... That's not what I want. I wanted to find out who I _was_ , not find out I was the Big Bad. So yeah. Sticking around in Haven. Mopping up Troubles. Dishing out parking tickets. I can handle that. I can handle living."

"And William?" Duke presses, as the cards are dealt again.

She tips her head and sighs, and her eyes are sad. "I'm not having a good run with guys. Maybe I really should hit Vince. Or call up Chris Brody, see what he's doing now."

Nathan and Duke both flinch at the thought. "Man, that's _low_ ," Duke mutters.

Audrey smirks.

"Who's Chris Brody?" Jen asks.

"Only about the bestest guy in the _whole wide world_ ," Audrey tells her. "You ask Duke and Nathan about their epic Bromance. Hey, if I'd known you both swung this way back then... I'm surprised you didn't jump _him_. That was his Trouble," she explains to Jennifer, grinning. "You'd like him. Obviously."

"Can we talk about something else?" Nathan pleads, staring at the remnant of his coffee and wishing he could add something stronger.

"Dudes are so fragile," Audrey tells Jen.

Duke wins the next hand, and Audrey the next, and the back-and-forth pretty much goes between them, except the time Jen wins and bounces around the room in celebration, and another when Nathan flings his cards in with what turns out to be a 50 dollar bill glibly peeled from his wallet, and somehow flukes it, because he can't even remember what his hand was as he's pulling his winnings back towards him.

"Will you be able to let him go?" Duke asks, still persisting, in a break where Jen's up at the kitchen area and Nathan's sagging even further back into the chair, probably being the reason Jennifer's started playing with the coffee machine again. Duke and Audrey are leaning very close over the table, but Nathan is awake enough and his ears are sharp enough to hear. "Guy's got a line into your head. Didn't turn out too well when he was screwing with ours."

"Yeah, but..." She scrunches her face. "It can't be the same way. Those black blob things are how the Troubles work. I'm immune to Troubles, and I can manipulate that stuff the same way he does, so I don't think he could use that. This connection is... something else. Something we don't know."

"All the more reason to keep an eye on it. You need to stay away from him tomorrow. Let me and Dwight do the manhandling."

Audrey blinks at him and anger flares in her. "Give it a rest, Duke. I _know_ what I need to do. I'll take this one, okay? Because apparently _my_ Trouble is called 'William', and he's a killer and an asshole, who hurt my friends and tortured the whole of the Glendower clan for _nothing_. So I'm going to see him dealt with, once and for all."

It's forceful and passionate and it's the Audrey Nathan knows of old, and in that one exchange is a flood of reassurance that he was missing about tomorrow. William won't take her down. Nathan has faith in her, as he always had. With her on-side, they can't help but win the day.

"Coffee... coffee... coffee..." Jen wanders back to the table, distributing mugs unsteadily, breaking the conspiratorial huddle of two apart. Duke gives a subtle nod as he leans back, and touches Audrey's hand, briefly, as it lands on the newly arrived coffee mug.

The game continues, sporadically. It's late, and the coffees seem to be having less and less effect. Nathan drifts, without meaning to, and can't pull himself out of it, even when he knows dimly that the voices around him have turned to talking about _him_.

"Trust the guy who suggests the sleepover to be the first to fall asleep." Audrey. _Lexie._

"He's still recovering. I could sleep. Like, do you think I have to be touching this book _all the time_ , because it's kind of gonna be uncomfortable lying on it?" Jennifer.

A snort from Duke, but there's no answer to that. "He's just bushed. Let him sleep." A sharp note in that last. Maybe Audrey was heading in for a poke. Nathan's eyes are too heavy to open and confirm.

"He'll have a bad back in the morning, sleeping there like that." Jen, again.

" _And_ he'll feel it." Audrey, not over-ready with the sympathy.

"Well, you know," Duke hazards, with a trace of discontent that's obvious to Nathan even through the haze. "Let him enjoy the pitfalls as well as the perks. Living a hundred-percent _in_ the world again after all this time has to be a funny thing, I guess."

There's more conversation after that, but Nathan just remembers it as noise. He wakes with light flooding through the drapes into his face at past 6AM, with a crick in his back and his neck stiffer than it's been in three days, and a numb thigh where Duke's been sprawled using him for a pillow. But it's a better kind of numbness, all in all, then the one he'd grown so used to. Duke snores softly, and Nathan moves his hand enough to trail his fingers through Duke's untidy hair, strewn over the couch cushions.

His senses should be starting to fade back to more normal levels, now, if anything at all. So it makes no sense whatsoever that the world seems to have more colours, more intensity, more _depth_ , than it's ever had before.

***

They come to the lighthouse following the path out onto the long spit of rock. Nathan has never walked out here before. He's seen it every time he looks out from the town over this side of the bay, almost every day of his life, but he's never _been there_ , even as a kid. It's never occurred to him.

Last night, Vince, Duke and Dwight admitted the same -- though Dwight wasn't in Haven as a kid. It makes Nathan wonder if maybe it's a part of the lighthouse's specific magic.

How, in any case, is a lighthouse _the heart of Haven_?

They're not going to get answers to that mystery today. Maybe it will always stay unsolved.

Jen leads the way through the door that only she can see and they descend down into the chamber beneath the lighthouse, Nathan for the first time, struggling awkwardly against the protests of his body as he takes the steep steps. Very faintly, the rocks of the carved cavern still reverberate with the sounds of the sea from far above. There's an odd blue-green reflection off everything, increasingly, the further down they go, though the rocks are reddish-brown and the lamplight is yellowish and the flashlights white.

"You can't get rid of me," William says, as their feet hit the ground in the bottom chamber. His heels scrape on the floor, echoing harshly as he drags them. His voice cracks. "You can't _ever_ be rid of me, because _I_ will always be... in _here_." His hands are cuffed but he makes it obvious what he means by _in here_ from the the way he lowers his head and lunges, confined in his bonds, toward Audrey.

She's not easily rattled, but if you know where to look, the slight widening of her eyes... Nathan inserts himself yet again between her and William, blocking their line of sight.

William's words are emphatic, but his breathing is still getting faster, as it has been ever since they brought him through the trapdoor. It's the first time they've ever detected anything close to panic in him, or any sign he might not be slyly confident of holding the upper hand. Nathan isn't forgiving enough to feel pity, or even a good enough man to feel neutral about it. What he feels is relief -- maybe even close to euphoria -- at the idea that this can _work_.

Tension still underlines any other emotion he has at the moment, of course.

"You shut the hell up," Duke says, jabbing a finger. "You're going through this hole, so how about enjoying your last few minutes in this world _quietly_. You know... to properly appreciate them."

There's something hugely unsettling about this place, but even so, William's reaction is extreme, worse than anyone else's except Dave. He's not doing any appreciating.

"Seriously, guys..." William says, trying hard for his we're-all-good-buddies-here voice, the tone he'd used so liberally at the beginning of his jaunt in Haven. "This is not a good idea. You have no _conception_ of the forces you're playing with. Maybe I went... a bit far..."

"You killed a fuckton of people, dirtbag," Audrey snaps at him harshly, and they can see Lexie taking over. "You tried to make me think I could be like you. I trusted you. I thought I _knew_ you."

William groans, then says with exaggerated patience, "That's _only_ because you're still the wrong one. If you'd only let go of this _shell_ , then you'd be able to see _everything_."

Audrey shoves her way around Nathan and kicks William in the nuts, jabbing with real gusto using her high-heeled Lexie boots and laying into him the way Nathan's fantasized doing. "'Shell'," she hisses under her breath. There's a small, strange reaction from her in sync with William's much more overt one, but she shakes her head and shakes it off, mostly unaffected.

Jordan was right. Nathan feels a bit sour thinking that he could've done that at any time.

William's doing a lot more groaning now. Duke shoves him out of the way to make space for Jennifer to examine the floor and start frowning at her Creepy Magical Book. Duke takes over Nathan's position as human shield between William and Audrey.

"Okay." Jen is terse, and scared, and unhappy at being the focus of all this. "I need William there, Dave there, and Audrey... over there, opposite me."

Duke and Dwight manhandle William into place. Jordan and Vince take Dave, who's still singing his tune of "You really don't want to open that gate." He and William should form their own choir.

"From what he's been gibbering all morning, we'll need to keep tight hold on Dave once that gate's opened," Jordan warns. "And you both should be careful, too." She turns her nose up at William. "If _he_ takes a dive into it, well, that makes all of our lives easier."

"I won't let you go in," Vince promises his brother. Nathan can't say he's _surprised_ to learn one of the Teagues is adopted. There seems to be a lot of it going around. It's a relief not to have learned _he_ was also planted from some other world, since he doesn't remember half the history ascribed to him, never remembered Max Hansen. Vince's gnarled hand on Dave's shoulder shows more affection than Nathan expects between the Teagues. Then again, Dave is also firmly handcuffed, and Vince leading him around like he's a detained criminal, which also kind of figures.

"We're ready," Jen says. She takes a deep breath, and eyes William with the sort of deep disapproval only a genuinely nice person can bring to bear. "Better say your last goodbyes."

"Only death and destruction await if you open that gate!" William yells. His feet shuffle as he struggles between Dwight and Duke, but like Audrey, he's no stronger than them. Immune to the Troubles and weirdly, incomprehensively mystically gifted in some way, but still just a man. Between the cuffs and Dwight's taser, the hands on him and the last few days' constant, _constant_ guard, he has no tricks to offer them now. A line into Audrey's head was his greatest card, and she is resisting him.

Nathan can see the tension tight in her face even now.

He's not holding William. He resolves to watch Audrey. He moves closer to her.

He's only ever seen her this pale in a hospital bed.

If they lose her now...

Jennifer holds out her book and the design on the floor of the chamber starts to glow, the centre to lift in a square outline, and whatever's beneath gives off the funny, blue-green light that's been faint about the chamber all this time. William gives another hoarse yell and struggles frantically in Dwight and Duke's grips. Dave tries to move, his face suddenly turning flat and his eyes fixed, and is held back by Jordan... Vince's hand is still on his shoulder, but it's mostly Jordan who's making the difference. The pull of the gate can't match her impossible, undead strength. It _clicks_ open to fullest extent, and that odd light is filling the room now, turning everything otherworldly and strange.

Nathan jerks his eyes quickly back to Audrey, but she isn't drawn to the portal. Nor is Jennifer, and nor, unfortunately, is William. He thrashes every step of the way, making it tortuous progress as Dwight and Duke try to force him toward the gaping hole.

They _don't_ want that portal open a moment longer than necessary. Nathan joins them, and suddenly Audrey is there, too, moving from her position, where she _shouldn't be_.

The focus of William's struggles change, as he claws to touch her hands, to grab onto her skin where it's bare. Nathan _notices_ how he's striving for that contact... can't help but cringe at the intensely personal parallel. He tries to shove his own hands in the way, but William's palm connects with Audrey's and his fingers close.

Unfathomably, Audrey's fingers close, too.

Nathan doesn't have time to shout a warning. The grip means she's still tightly holding William as Duke gives a great final shove to pitch William into the void.

" _No!"_ Nathan clings to Audrey. His ribs grate. They can't take that kind of pressure. Duke's face, realising what he's done, is a picture of horror. For a moment, the world seems to hold, all of them suspended.

Then Dwight reaches in and twists William's wrist, and his grip starts to fail. Nathan tries to peel back Audrey's fingers. Duke gives another shove, this time wrenching back with his arm around Audrey's waist as he does, applying all the normal, human strength he can, strength that Nathan still lacks.

Their hands separate. Audrey is sent staggering back from the hole. William gives a final cry, but by the time Nathan looks over the edge, he's long gone. Audrey can't see him when she dives back in close, her face crumpling, turning shattered with grief.

Something twists in Nathan's chest that has nothing to do with his busted ribs.

Duke is yelling, "Close it!" and it seems like Jen must be trying to fathom how to do that with a book and a bunch of verse no-one else can see. She stands and holds the book out, uncertainly.

Dwight has joined Jordan and Vince in sitting on Dave, as the small, old man shows alarming intensity in his zombie-like struggle to get closer to the portal.

"Get him out of here!" Nathan urges them. The portal is closing, _starting_ to close, at Jen's command, but it's horrendously slow, and the distress it causes Dave is extreme. "We've got this."

Audrey takes a step toward the closing gate. The look in her eyes has a good deal more focus than the emptiness in Dave's. Nathan sees it and dives to tackle her. It can only be conscious decision pulling her movements toward that blue-green light where William was lost. "Audrey, don't!" Pain bursts through him as his body connects hard with hers and they both hit the ground on their knees.

"No..." She struggles against him, trying to move closer to the gate on all fours. "I have to..."

"We'll take him!" Nathan dimly hears Vince tell Dwight. "Help Nathan!"

Vince and Jordan are dragging Dave away, and Dwight's coming... Nathan wonders where _Duke_ is, steady helping hand and presence at his back, but he has to keep focused on fighting Audrey's desperate efforts to make it through that closing door, can't look around to find him.

"He was right, Nathan. He's the one. You don't understand, I have to _be_ with him..."

Nathan _could_ understand that sentiment, except-- "He wants you to be someone else!" He peels her hands from the lip of the closing gate. She jerks her elbow and deliberately scores his broken ribs.

Breath and thought scatter from Nathan's body. It was already difficult enough to hold on, with the position testing his healing injuries. Hitting the ground is worse.

"Nathan! _Nathan!_ " Dwight's voice penetrates the pain haze. Nathan tries to blink a clear picture of what's happening now. Dwight has hold of Audrey but she's clawing at his face, and a gun -- damn it, _Nathan's gun_ is in her other hand. Dwight's pushing her arm down, but any second now she'll realise she doesn't need to aim, or else she'll stop hesitating, already knowing that.

Nathan's ear is flattened to the cold cave floor and his body is twisted up on one side; ribs shrieking at him, neck a stiff bar of agony. He can't be sure if he passed out for a moment or not, but probably not -- it's only pain. He's just so _raw_ to it. He rolls over and puts his palm down to flatten Audrey's gun hand to the floor with all the weight he can bring to bear. The gun muzzle scrapes a ridge in the rock-and-dirt floor of the cavern as she struggles to break the hold. She could still pull the trigger. It might take out both their hands and never get to Dwight. That's not a great solution, but it's all he has the capacity and thought to do.

Then, the door to another world slams closed. Audrey lets out a long wail, the sort of noise Nathan never imagined to hear her make, and collapses in a huddle, hands abandoning their mischief to cover her face. Dwight moves away from her, shock evident in his face.

Nathan re-holsters his gun, gasping for breath against the tight agony in his chest, and pulls himself up by inches; raises his head and opens his mouth to say something expressing relief.

Except there's a grimmer cast to Dwight's face now, and a horror in his eyes that says it's not over. Nathan lifts himself enough to follow Dwight's gaze.

Duke is hunched on the ground, bending over something.

Nathan blinks in confusion, trying to clear his eyes which still feel like they're full of sparks. It's Jennifer. Jennifer is on the ground. Duke is moving over her.

_CPR_ , Nathan recognises abruptly, his brain kicking in. Duke is performing CPR. But that means that Jennifer is...

"What the hell happened?" Nathan gasps.

"She just fell. Like she just _stopped_ , as soon as that damned gate started to shut." Dwight must also have been distracted, but was apparently facing the right way.

"Outside," Nathan chokes. "Cellphone signal." He struggles but is too slow even making it to his feet. He can't do it himself. Someone else must. There's no signal under the lighthouse, and probably not until some way back up the spit. "Call an ambulance..." Nathan doesn't know why he's giving orders to Dwight, but it's obvious the big guy is physically in the best condition to do this, and Duke is occupied.

_Duke_ has demonstrably done this successfully before.

"Go," Nathan begs Dwight, who's already turning. Maybe he needs the order because it takes that little extra push for him to be able to _leave_ this scene. Audrey's shriek cut short after a few seconds, and her sobbing has quieted now, but Nathan can understand that Dwight would be off-balance. He's never seen Audrey Parker like this. Maybe no-one has.

As Dwight's back disappears into the tunnels toward the staircase, Nathan crawls to Audrey. He'd go to her anyway, but _if_ he can snap her out of this, perhaps she'll have some clue what happened to Jennifer, some idea that can help. Chillingly, Nathan remembers William's warning about other dangers awaiting if they opened the gate.

"Audrey, are you okay?" She lifts her head, and he can see her eyes are clearer. "Audrey..." He heaves her name this time with relief. That's her. She's _back_. For a moment there, he thought they had got someone else.

"I felt..." she starts. Then she shakes her head; shakes all over, and he can almost see a darkness falling away from her eyes. Then it's replaced by urgency. "Oh, no!"

She's looking beyond him to Duke and Jennifer.

She scrambles closer, but ultimately holds back, and only waits and watches, breathless, leaving Duke to his task.

It's a curious and awful thing to watch, from Nathan's new perspective. The artificial rise and fall of Jennifer's chest under Duke's hands, the forced breaths via Duke's lips. He can't help but imagine _himself_ in that position. It makes it more real, somehow. His ribs pulse in sympathy with each down-push. At least Jen's not bleeding, and Duke isn't hyped up or slipping in and out of his game-face. He's just brown eyed, red faced, and desperate to win back a human life.

Duke looks a fraction short of a freak-out, even while he works so hard, and Nathan wonders if the memories are a difficult recall for him, too, triggering all the time he spent trying to save Nathan in another darkened cave.

When Jen finally draws in her own fragile breath, he thinks everyone in there hears it.

"Oh my God." Duke whoops the words, amid huge breaths of his own. Then Audrey's at his side, fussing over Jennifer, touching her face, loosening her clothes. Duke all but collapses next to them. Nathan gets as close as he dares, not wanting to get in the way. But Jennifer's breathing seems to stabilize. Her chest rises and falls of its own accord, regular and even. Her face is very pale.

"We need to get her up and out of here," Audrey says, "Or else risk explaining about the invisible trapdoor no-one but the unconscious girl can see to an EMT who doesn't know about the Troubles." She looks at Duke apologetically.

He groans and nods, gathering Jen up into his arms. "She's a hell of a lot lighter than you, buddy," he tells Nathan. Nathan staggers back, unable to help. He's pretty sure his left arm won't support any weight at the moment. It's all he can do to follow Duke, and Audrey helping Duke, all the way up the curling steps.

The hole disappears as Nathan's trailing foot passes through it. Audrey falls to her knees next to him and they feel for the hatch to close it, but the textures under their hands match the lie of their eyes. Nathan feels only the cold roughness of the lighthouse floor. They have no choice but to leave it.

Jordan, Vince and Dave are outside. Jordan rises from beside the hunched old men, her jaw hanging wide. Dwight is something like a mile away, back along the long, narrow spit where the lighthouse stands. Nathan hopes he has a signal by now. Wonders if they could even get an ambulance down to this spot. "We need to get her to the mainland."

"Is she still breathing okay?" Audrey asks, and Duke nods, no breath left himself.

Duke is visibly wiped out from the effort of CPR and carrying another person up all the steps. He hasn't done any of this fuelled by Troubled blood, and each further step seems to bring him nearer to collapse.

"Let me," Jordan says, and easily lifts the weight of the other woman across into her arms. She holds Jennifer steady and starts running, changing her gait experimentally at first to find a way to run that causes the minimum jostling for her burden. She heads after Dwight.

Duke starts staggering after her. "If she stops breathing again, Jordan hasn't the breath to--" he gasps, fighting Audrey as she grabs his arm to stop him.

"Neither do you, right now. I'll go."

Then she's sprinting, lithe and bright, white-blonde highlights in her hair catching the sun. That's Audrey Parker, Nathan thinks: still here with them. Still _herself_. It gives him one thing, at least, to be proud of in the endless logbook of his mistakes... of everything else he's done in this town.

Nathan groans and eases carefully down. There's a constriction in the left side of his chest, and he thinks he needs to be on his back, so he lies on his back. The straightened posture draws out some of the knots and tightness, though it hurts getting to it. Something shifts that he's fairly sure shouldn't be shifting, but it's shifting _back_... because he suspects Audrey's elbow knocked it out of place. Again.

"What's up?" Duke halts partway through flopping exhaustedly beside him, rolling up again to regard Nathan with concern.

"I think Audrey rebroke a rib."

Duke stares. "Has it punctured anything? It could've--"

"Nothing worse than before." Nathan hopes. He's pretty sure. He can _feel_ all the broken pieces inside him, now, after all. The ambulance is on its way in any case. And he's sure he can still get up and stumble to it under his own steam, no need for Duke -- or, God forbid, _Jordan_ \-- to carry him.

***

They end up making separate journeys to the hospital. Nathan and Duke don't stumble back along the spit with the Teagues until after the ambulance has gone, speeding away with lights flashing, and Nathan wouldn't hold it for himself. There's already plenty that he won't forgive himself for, but if they got that sweet kid killed trying to solve Haven's problems, it would be a grimmer addition still.

Audrey went with Jen. Dwight and Jordan drive off with the stressed Teagues. Duke takes Nathan to the hospital.

Nathan endures more poking and prodding, more x-rays. Duke goes to see if he can check on Jen while Nathan's getting scanned, and re-finds him a few hours later. His face speaks loudly enough of his relief before he even opens his mouth.

"She should pull through." Duke trails his fingers over the back of Nathan's hand, where it rests on the arm of yet another hospital wheelchair. "But no-one knows why all her systems just stopped. Which after William's warning is pretty creepy."

It _is_ , but... "We don't know exactly what happened in there. Maybe Jennifer can tell us when she wakes up."

They wait around another hour for the doctors to get back to them with instructions. Nathan just wants to go home. Any home, either home. Right now, he doesn't care.

William is gone and Audrey is free. _Really_ free: there won't be another identity ever again. Maybe she can't find her 'real' self, but she sure as hell deserves the chance to make real the self she's ended up with. And if fighting and fixing the Troubles is her penance, of some kind... well, she's still here.

She's not the only one.

The radiologist comes back, eventually, excitement levels high, followed by the ER doctor from earlier. "You'll be pleased to know the hyoid bone fracture appears almost knitted," the radiologist says. "Gloria Verrano discussed this case with me. You're my first living hyoid break."

One of _those_ doctors. Nathan knows the type from his days of numbness, and the experience makes him averse to being anyone's project. But he endures the interest and finally gets the news that, yes, there's a rib re-broken, but it's back in alignment and internal damage looks minimal. They can safely strap it up and send him on his way.

It takes another half an hour to do that.

Duke throws up his hands when they're finally sent away, turns it into a crunching stretch and accompanying groan once they're in the air. "I need a coffee. No, I need a _drink._ And a couch. Jesus, _today_... This has definitely been..." He sighs. "Well. It worked, so I guess it's been the best of all possible outcomes, in the end. Because I _did not_ expect it to work."

"We probably shouldn't split hairs," Nathan agrees tiredly. "Let's go home."

***

They call by to check on Jennifer and Audrey on the way. Jen is sitting up in bed, her movements looking stiff and painful in ways Nathan's body understands, though Duke didn't do any significant damage this time. Her eyes are open and her pale face still animated by life. Audrey sits in the chair beside her, a bakery box of cupcakes on her lap.

"I sent Dwight for them," Audrey says, following the direction of Nathan's gaze. "You'll be disappointed to know you just missed Jordan." She feeds a cupcake to Jen.

She looks all right. There were several horrible moments after the portal closed and William was gone when Nathan had been sure she was not all right, would never be all right. The proof of the contrary leaves him feeling weak, and he sort of wishes he hadn't ditched the wheelchair. Duke must sense something, because he slips an arm around Nathan's waist and surreptitiously adds the support of his body pressing close against his back, making it seem no more than casual and affectionate.

Jennifer might be fooled, but Audrey probably isn't. She does, however, allow them to pretend.

"We wanted to see that the lovely ladies were okay before we ditched," Duke says, laying on the smarm a bit, next to Nathan's ear.

"Can't help but sense some insincerity in that phrase when you mostly want to ditch to go give Nathan a celebratory bone," Audrey critiques. "Of course, he's lovely too."

She does it, Nathan suspects, to make Jen giggle and blush. Knowing that doesn't stop his own face from flushing fiercely.

"Yes, he is." Duke kisses his jaw, not helping that.

Nathan growls, "Stop it." He jerks his head and tries to step clear of Duke with only partial success. His unsteadiness leaves him unable to risk breaking away completely. "Will you be... all right?" he asks Audrey, looking at her earnestly enough to tell her he's talking about more than the short term. "What will you do, now?"

"Dwight talked to me about staying with Haven PD, so we are good there. We need to work on a system of managing the Troubles for the long term. William's gone, but that means we're basically back to what we started with, except there's no end in sight."

Nathan nods. He's been thinking about it, too. Couldn't help it.

"What we need to do," Audrey says, "is to hound out all the secrets. Trace the family lines. Make the Troubles _known_. People like the Glendowers, like the Harkers, they'd been managing their own Troubles for years, no danger to anyone until William came along. Well," she amends, "no more danger than any _other_ human being full of distrust and anger and flaws."

Cole Glendower wasn't made a murderer by his Trouble, after all.

"Get them all out into the open," Nathan agrees.

"Get the truly dangerous ones _known_ , at least to the Guard and you guys, and we know what to look out for," Duke says. "So long as you don't expect to take the Crocker Contingency every time it gets sticky." The nervousness doesn't show so much in his voice as in the sudden agitation of the arm loosely curled around Nathan's waist.

"No, Duke." Audrey's eyes go sad and serious. "The Crocker Contingency stays our very _last_ resort."

"William was deliberately creating and exacerbating the sorts of Troubles where we'd be forced to use it," Nathan says. "The Rev and his old crowd figured nearly any Trouble merited using it. It will never be like that again."

"No, it won't." Audrey bites into a cupcake. She reluctantly holds the box out to them, but they both know when to abstain. Besides, Nathan couldn't contemplate eating something that sweet at the moment. It still feels like the world's on overdrive. "We have to accept, though, that there may still be truly dangerous Troubles out there, like Arla's, or Harry Nix's, that force the Troubled person to kill to survive. There isn't always going to be a solution. And they don't just have to be a monster for a year or a few years out of twenty-seven, now."

"Is that really the end of any... other options?" Duke asks. "What does Jen's book have to say on it?"

Jen lifts it up by one leaf of its cover, and the pages flip. To Nathan's eyes, they look to be covered by cheesy teen vampire angst, but she says, "Gone. Blank. The whole of it, blank."

"Jennifer." Nathan approaches the subject, and it comes out too brusque, too blunt, but no-one else is asking and he needs to know. "What happened in the cave? William's warning... Did something come through?"

"Something... tried." Abruptly there are tears sparkling in Jennifer's eyes and her face sort of collapses, and Nathan feels awful. "I think... the gate was open too short a time. I think I held it back. But it was... I almost..." She covers her mouth with her hand.

Audrey holds her and glares at Nathan, while Duke's hand drums a comforting rhythm on his abdomen, though it's a notably subtle show of support.

"It was horrible," Jen sniffs. "So strong... But I'd know...I'm sure I'd _feel_ if it had made it through." She shudders.

Audrey lets the silence hang for several long seconds before she tries to recapture the thread. "If we stop trying to push some ideal mystical solution, and _aren't_ any longer fixated on sacrificing someone to a magical Barn at the end of every cycle, then when all that's done with, you have to look at managing and learning to live with it. That's just going to have to be what we do. Dwight and Vince are going to wring co-operation out of the Guard, and give us all the Troubles _they_ know about that could explode in someone's face. Between us we have my immunity and Jordan's crazy zombie strength and immortality, and you -- well, I taught you everything I know." She grins wryly at Nathan. Then she hesitates. "But if you weren't okay continuing this, after what happened..." Nathan feels Duke's hand clench in the back of his shirt, but he's too caught off-balance by what she's saying to truly notice Duke's tension. "The Guard have agreed to release you. I've told them I'll take other... apprentices."

Nathan shakes his head fiercely. "Parker, I _caused_ this. I'll keep doing what I can. It's part of the job, in Haven, besides." He taps the badge at his belt, wryly. "I'm not planning to give up that."

She nods. Her eyes drift behind him to Duke and there's a trace of apology in her face. It occurs to Nathan _then_ what answer Duke might have been hoping for, what must have been the source of that tension. He starts to turn. "I'm sorry, I just can't--"

"Of course you can't." Duke's hand on his shoulder is warm and rocks him gently on his feet. "You're not going to abandon Haven."

But Duke could take his boat and disappear, leave behind the threat of being asked to use his curse again, the terrible possibility of losing himself into madness, and they would still have Wade. Who is mad already.

With Audrey and Jen right there, Nathan opts to wait on mentioning that option.

Audrey clears her throat. "Of course, there'll be other kinds of Troubles. People who stayed outside Haven. The Guard has this network that -- that we _really_ need to take a look into. This town, I _swear_... so many resources, and none of them ever freaking _talking_ to each other."

"What about Audrey Parker?" Jen prompts. Maybe her choice to phrase it that way stems from discovering that 'Lexie', who she lived with for months, was always another woman altogether.

Audrey raises her eyebrows. "Audrey Parker's going to be very busy. That goes without saying."

Duke tips his head. "There's more to life than Troubles, Audrey. Especially now you have _time_."

She snorts. "Well, there's cupcakes. Floofy cocktails at the _Gull_. Crappy vampire novels. Crappy vampire TV. I guess I _will_ get to see the rest of Vampire Diaries." Nathan and Duke collectively groan at the thought of sitting through any more of it, though. "Love is overrated." Suddenly her face is serious. Intense. Fierce. She frowns at them both. "I don't want you, Nathan, or you, Duke, and I _definitely_ don't want William. Although in... oh, a year or so, when I can _think_ about men again, I might look up a nice, arrogant asshole of a Troubled guy who won't try and suck my brain. Depends how much more of a dick he's turned into in the meantime."

Duke and Nathan groan again at the thought of Chris Brody. "Of all the guys..." Duke starts. Then he throws his hands up in defeat. "No. Never mind. Ignore that."

"I will," Audrey says, a glint in her eye. She may well bring Chris Brody back at least fifty percent to fuck with them. Her regard of Nathan turns more wistful, for a moment, but she narrows her eyes and gives a very firm headshake. "I felt it for a moment," she admits, looking down. "All of it. Mara... William and me... What I felt about him. Then the gate closed and the connection... It was all ripped away."

"I'm sorry," Nathan says, aware it's becoming unoriginal, but with nothing else he can see that he could _possibly_ offer.

"No." She sighs. "I'd rather be Audrey Parker, and not-evil. Thanks." Something in her face clears as she... lets it go, and she repeats. "Thank _you_." She grunts a little uncomfortably. "Okay, so you sort of doomed a town. But it worked out for me. And now we both have to keep fixing, and fixing, and _fixing_ , to earn every moment we have..."

She reaches out and touches the back of Nathan's hand with her fingers. It doesn't make him ache like it used to. It's just like any other touch, now. He bumps her hand with his own fingers, easily. "We can do that."

"But," she adds, "we will also have some kind of a rota system, because this no-time-off-the-job shit is a no kind of a deal, and the Guard and I will have Words. And I'd kind of like to go see the world, since I've apparently never actually seen anywhere else other than Haven and that one trip to Colorado. You guys will probably just want to lock the doors of the _Cape Rouge_ and have a sex marathon. Jordan wants to go on a pampering holiday... I don't know, I didn't ask. Zombie pampering."

Nathan has a horrible, sinking suspicion that somewhere along the way this arrangement is going to result in Jordan carrying a badge.

"Go home." Audrey wafts her hands at them, shooing them away. "Celebrate surviving. Right now, I care more about my heap of cupcakes and busting my roomie out of this joint as soon as possible. But when all's said and done, I think I am going to _really enjoy_ planning for the future."

***

Duke and Nathan drive home.

There's a little confusion as to where 'home' is, because Nathan says, " _Cape Rouge,"_ and Duke says, "House!" In the ensuing argument, Duke also says, "It's a way better space for two of us, with _way_ more space to bring the guys -- gals mostly, I guess, except for Dwight -- over for movie nights. Besides, you know _why_ I always lived in a boat?"

Nathan looks at him, having no idea what answer Duke wants. "You like the boat."

"Because it's impermanent." Duke rattles his knuckles against Nathan's forehead with peevish frustration, and Nathan slaps them away. "Because it _moves_. It's a _movable home_ , doofus. I never meant to stay."

That's when Nathan mentions that maybe Duke shouldn't stay. Maybe the best thing for him would be to leave the Troubles behind. Duke's curse is meaningless, after all, unless he's interacting with other Troubled people. There would be almost no risk if Duke simply left Haven.

That's when Duke gets mad.

"No, I don't _want_ you to go," Nathan says, exasperatedly flailing his hand around the passenger seat of the car, feeling like he's some kind of comedy act. "But I don't want to feel like I'm the one keeping you here when the stakes are your _life_." Or sanity, which is worse.

"Why would I ever leave behind _this_?" Duke hauls Nathan into a kiss and grabs his ass.

"Ow." He tries, but the space is too constricted and his body isn't really up to the contortions.

"All right." Duke huffs and straightens, putting his hands back on the wheel. The truck is parked, though haphazardly, at the side of the road where he drew it up when they started yelling. "Look, if this is going to be a permanent thing, could you try to get injured less often, now you can feel it?"

Nathan scowls at him. After a moment, he adds, "It's not like it was ever _deliberate_."

They go to the _Rouge_ , so Nathan wins, sort of. "Everything's still there, and it's practically been our home the last few months, and I don't need that much space or that much stuff anyhow," were his arguments. Dismantling them, they're not great arguments. He suspects he'll end up caving to Duke on the issue of the house, because ultimately he's less invested in the argument and Duke seems incredibly determined.

Duke's book on Tantric Yoga is on the table in the galley. Nathan contemplates hiding it and then subtly dumping it overboard when he has chance, because he has a horrible feeling it's also going to be something he ends up caving to Duke on.

Duke sees him glaring at it and gripes, "I don't understand how you can _not_ be wanting to experience sensation in each and every shade or perversion possible."

"Because I'm not you?" Nathan retorts.

"When you were numb, you were _so much_ more kinked than me," Duke complains.

Nathan transfers the glare to him and deems that something else it's best not to answer.

Duke sighs and asks, "Are you good with solids yet?"

"Uh..." Nathan has been shouting a lot in the last quarter-hour without particularly noticing it. "Reckon so."

Duke eyes him and pours two cans of his now extensive store of soup into a pan with the announcement they'll play safe. "I didn't feel like cooking anyway. This way we can just eat and crash all the quicker. Seems like staying up to play poker til 4AM then opening portals to alien worlds is a good way to wipe a body out."

He decants the soup into mugs when it's barely fully warmed through and they crash before the TV for half an hour in relative silence. Nathan's ribs throb. He has a little too much of a headache developing to enjoy football. The events of the morning -- of the past few weeks -- all seem to be reverberating through him still.

Duke doesn't bother to ask when he turns the TV off. "Come on, man," he groans through a yawn and a stretch. "Let's go to bed."

Nathan's reflection in the mirror as he brushes his teeth looks too alert to be ready to sleep. Duke dodges in behind him to use the toilet, earning Nathan's annoyance. Less than a week ago, it seemed impossible they could be back here again. Any sane thought led to the conclusion that William had broken them apart -- broken them individually, and broken anything they could possibly have between them. Yet here they are.

Here they are, arguing again.

Nathan huffs soft laughter as he gets into bed and Duke asks, "What?" a bit defensively.

"We're still here." Nathan has to gesture him in close to kiss him. Injuries are a bitch to spontaneity. But he won't be injured forever. Duke starts out agitated and slightly rough, but softens as he gets into the kiss.

They lie down by inches, manouevring around for the ongoing problem of Nathan's ribs. Duke curls arms around his shoulders and waist, warm, slightly sticky, strongly scented. They had no energy to shower. But Nathan leans into him and breathes. Some habits don't die. Scent is a powerful comforter, too. "It's like six o'clock and I don't even care," Duke mumbles. "I don't have any energy. I say we set the alarm for the morning and don't move until it goes off."

Nathan doesn't really feel like that, but he's too dazed, too devoid of other ideas, and is content to go along with Duke's. He grunts into Duke's shoulder and assumes it will get taken as assent.

They cling together for a while rather than try to settle. The act of breathing is hypnotic. The sounds of the _Rouge_ tick over, comforting, familiar. Nathan even starts to drift. He starts to think Duke's already gone to sleep.

A soft sigh into this shoulder announces the contrary: silky-warm-moist against his skin, sending goosebumps marching out. "I am _sorry_ ," Duke says, slowly, into the rhythmic quiet, "that I took your Trouble away. Hell, if I'd _killed_ you, I'd..." Nathan is in an excellent position to feel the horror with which his body reacts to that. "But somehow... miraculously... incredibly... you're not dead. So I'm sorry, but I also don't regret it. Can't regret it." His arms cling harder. His fingers dig into flesh. Nathan feels the harder ridges of fingernails. "I don't think you _get_ how much difference not being Troubled makes in you. Even if you... even if you don't want it. But it's _sad_ if all you can ever see in this freakin' _gift_ is that you don't deserve it, because you do. You deserve to live and feel everything just for being a human being. Like Audrey says, I guess you still _deserve_ to spend the rest of your life fixing Troubles in return for sealing everyone else's, but _this_... it wasn't your punishment.

"Hell, your Trouble wasn't even _done to you_. Some long-lost ancestor... William and some ages-old evil-bitch version of Audrey... You don't need to wear it like a fucking badge. You don't need it to do the work. It was always as much a hindrance as it was a help." Duke's hands slide over Nathan's face, squeeze his skin, trail deliberate patterns upon it. "You get to _live_ , Nathan. You get to keep going and keep remembering how to live for all the Troubled out there who'll need you. So that they won't need _me_. Feeling it... is part of that. It will make you _better_.

"So you don't need to castigate yourself." He leaves a long, ticking pause. "Okay?"

"I--" Nathan begins, and apparently that's already enough for Duke to tell it's going to be an objection.

Duke hisses in frustration and states, brusquely, "You suffered as much as anyone under the Troubles, and besides, it's got fuck all to do with deserving or undeserving. You didn't ask to be cured. You nearly died for it. It sure as hell wasn't doing you any favours for those first few days. I totally suck for doing it. But you're _not_ Troubled, and no power left on Earth can make you Troubled again. End of story."

Nathan rolls a little to the side, jerks his arm back and slams it forward, bracing the heel of his hand to strike Duke in the gut. He does pull it so that he's not hitting Duke as hard as he _could_ , but anger still simmers in him for this part, which was wholly and completely Duke's choice even if the rest was not. 

Duke lets out an extremely satisfying _"oof"_ and his reaction rocks both their bodies. "What the hell kind of an answer is that?"

"It means you're not forgiven," Nathan grunts. "But if I couldn't live with it, I wouldn't be here. So _stop talking_ , Duke."

There's a short silence, and then Duke makes a choked noise and demands, "Is that... are you hard?"

"Yes," Nathan says, slightly smugly.

"From thumping me. That was--"

Nathan huffs and mutters some half-hearted excuse about sensation and over-sensitisation and also not really being tired.

"Well, fuck you," says Duke, "because I'm exhausted."

"Mm." Nathan moves slowly against him, pushing in with his groin. They're slid down to the point they're pretty much lying evenly side-by-side down the bed, though sprawling on his good side means he's on the wrong side of the bed from habit.

"Evil," Duke groans. "You are _evil_. All those blows to the head during that time on the road, they brought out the _evil_ version of Nathan Wuornos. You definitely came out of that winter an unstoppable sex fiend."

"It's half past six," Nathan states.

"You have _broken ribs_ ," Duke counters.

"We can work around it."

"Sex fiend... Shit, that's not an _insult_. You're not even going to bother to argue with it." Duke rolls away only to come back in lower down, spreading apart Nathan's knees, pulling up the covers over them both. He disappears under the covers. A moment later, Nathan feels lips curl around his cock and almost breaks something else with the wild jerk of motion the sensation sends rippling through him.

"Ow."

"Serves you right," Duke says, muffled. The words ripple over Nathan's cock, making him groan. Then Duke speaks intently but indistinctly as he ducks his head lower still. In the circumstances, Nathan can't be sure of every single syllable, but he's fairly sure of the gist. "You owe me. Tantric yoga. Tomorrow. No weaselling out..."

He distorts the last word into a vibration that lights up every nerve connection in Nathan's body like they've all got a direct line to his dick. So it isn't really his fault he ends up saying, "Yes! Damn it, all right!"

Duke's reply gets lost among the enthusiastic motions of oral sex, but was probably smug and infuriating, and Nathan decides he really doesn't care to know.

END


End file.
